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CARLO GESUALDO 
PRINCE OF VENOSA 


MUSICIAN AND MURDERER 


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DON CARLO GESUALDO WITH HIS UNCLE, CARLO BORROMEO 


[front 


CARLO GESUALDO 
PRINCE OF VENOSA 


MUSICIAN AND MURDERER 


BY 


CECIL GRAY anp PHILIP HESELTINE 


With 34 Musical Examples in 
the text and 8 full-page plates 





LINCOLN MAC VEAGH 


foe, CDT AL 6 6UPRESS 
NEW YORK : MCMXXVI 





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ae 
SIGNOR SALVATORE DI GIACOMO 


Poet, Historian, and Scholar, 
this study of his compatriot 
is respectfully dedicated by 
the grateful Authors, as an 
imadequate return for his 
invaluable assistance. 





CONTENTS 


PART I: THE LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO, Rag 
CECIL GRAY rd =e ms Peat tk 

Appendix I: Letters from Torquato Tasso to Don 
Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa ... oe aA 
Bibliography e: cae a me A eeu so 
Iconography a ve a oe an ey eae 


PART II: CARLO GESUALDO CONSIDERED AS A 
MURDERER, sy CECI GRAY ....... 61 


PART III: GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN, sy PHILIP 


HESELTINE _.... ae ey ae Pan aS 
Bibliographical Appendix 3 +e we ps ae 


Appendix of Musical Examples ... ae ve Pek G: 





PLATE 


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VIIL: 


Piao LLLUSTRATIONS. 


Don Carlo Gesualdo with his Uncle, 
Carlo Borromeo 


Picture of the Carafa family, in which 
is portrayed Donna Maria d’Avalos 


Palazzo San Severo before earthquake 
of 1688 


Picture in Convento dei Cappuccini, 
Gesualdo 


Courtyard of the Castle at Gesualdo ... 
View of Gesualdo with Castle .... 
The Castle at Gesualdo 


Frontispiece of Sacrae Cantiones, Ist 
Book, by Carlo Gesualdo ... 


Frontispiece 


facing page 10 


70° 


78 





MUSICAL EXAMPLES 


IN THE TEXT 


Nu” & W 


VARIOUS COMPOSERS PAGE 

Marchettus of Padua, 1274 Fy er ae Gaeiee 
Prosdocimus de Beldemandis, 1412... nes en TOd 
Johannes Tinctoris, 1477 104 
Anton Brumel, 1516 106 
Costanzo Festa, 1539 107 
Cesare Tudino, 1554 108 
Orlando di Lasso, 1555 I10 
Cipriano de Rore, 1555 ... III 
2 re “ II! 

9 - ¥566 ... III 
Francesco Orso, 1567 113 
» » »» ITS 
Giuseppe Caimo, 1585 114 
Luca Marenzio, 1599 TTS 
Giles Farnaby, 1598 117 
Gesualdo, 1611 121 
Wagner, 1855 Tz1 
IZ! 


Delius, 1907 


xi 


xii MUSICAL EXAMPLES 


IN THE APPENDIX 


GESUALDO 

PAGE 

1. Deh come in van sospiro (VI) (complete) 5 as ioe hee 

2. Ocome é gran martire (II) ats a pers T+ 

3. Donna se m/ancidete (III) ome Es Mais 1. 

4. Sparge la morte (IV)... yi a = ae 

5. Mercé grido piangendo (V) “ed ey error 4 

6. 99 * * 3 fs ve Regs 

7. Tu piangi 0 Filli mia (VI) ae sp: Sees 

8. em . aoe Ate oa Hee 

9. lopartoenonpitdissi ,, S 142 

10. Mille volte il di moro _,, 5 142 
II. 9 ” ” ” ae ore aay ace 142 
12. Ilo pur respiro SF Bh are he CSAS 
13. Ardita Zanzaretta bee re a ao es 
14. + iy a tn - as 2 EGS 
15. Ardo per te miobene ,, ee ey ios ae 
16. Ancide sol la morte + Br a iy ee 
17. Moro lasso rf oh as Bites oS 
18. Tu m’uccidi o crudele (V) (complete) ... ion een 

[N.B.—In these musical examples, the note- | _ | 


values of the original are generally halved (i.e. @  & Of the original) 
and bar-lines have been inserted, accidentals remaining in force throughout 
the bar in the modern fashion. None of the examples have been transposed 
out of their original keys.]} 


PREPACE 


The present writers are by no means the first to 
occupy themselves with Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of 
Venosa. The main difference between them and their 
predecessors, however, is that those of the latter who 
have been interested in his work have almost entirely 
neglected his biography, while those who have 
occupied themselves with the dramatic incidents of 
his life have for the most part been entirely unaware 
of his great artistic significance. Consequently, the 
authors feel that they can reasonably claim the present 
effort to be the only tolerably complete study of Carlo 
Gesualdo, as both man and musician, that has yet 
appeared. This is not to say that they regard it as 
being in any sense final or definitive. Though no 
effort has been spared to make it complete, it is more 
than probable that future investigators will be able 
to discover fresh material, particularly on the 
biographical side. That they have been able to do as 
much as they have is almost entirely due to the extra- 
ordinary kindness, courtesy, and _ disinterested 
enthusiasm of Sig. Salvatore di Giacomo, who is one 
of the greatest living authorities on Neapolitan history 
and art. It might be too much to say that without his 
help and sympathy this little book would never have 
been written; but it would certainly be much more 
imperfect and incomplete than it actually is. Their 
thanks are also due to Messrs. Boris Chroustchoff, 


Xill 


XIV PREFACE 


Norman Douglas and Sacheverell Sitwell, for 
valuable help and suggestions; to Miss Gladys Field, 
Miss Beatrice Hughes-Pope and Messrs. Albert 
Whitehead, Taylor Harris and Joseph Maclean, for 
singing through several of the madrigals of Gesualdo, 
thus affording the writers a more precise idea of the 
music than could possibly be attained through a mere 
study of it on paper; to the Director of the Uffizi 
Gallery in Florence for permission to reproduce the 
picture of the Palazzo Sansevero prior to the earth- 
quake of 1688; and also to the Sindaco of Gesualdo 
for his assistance in procuring a photograph of the 
painting in the church of the Convento dei Cappuccini. 


CECIL GRAY 
PHILIP HESELTINE 


Pall 


Life of Carlo Gesualdo 


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PART I 


The Life of Carlo Gesualdo 


Gesualdo, the Prince of Venosa, 
Was a truly astounding composer. 
Though much of his history 
Is shrouded in mystery, 
We have here all the facts we DO know, Sir! 


His most Illustrious and Serene Highness Don 
Carlo, third Prince of Venosa, eighth Count of Consa, 
fifteenth Lord of Gesualdo, Marquis of Laino, 
Rotondo and S. Stefano, Duke of Caggiano, Lord of 
Frigento, Acquaputida, Paterno, S. Manco, Boneto, 
Luceria, S. Lupolo, etc., was descended from one of 
the oldest and noblest families in the kingdom of the 
Two Sicilies. The first mention of the name of 
Gesualdo in Neapolitan history dates back to the dark 
ages which intervene between the fall of Rome and 
the establishment of the medizval Empire by Charle- 
magne, and to the time of the ancient kingdom of the 
Lombards. During the siege of Benevento by 
Constans II, Emperor of Byzantium, Duke Romualdo, 
who was in command of the city, finding himself 
hard pressed, resolved to send his trusty servant 
Gesualdo to his father Grimoaldo, King of Lombardy, 
for assistance. Gesualdo accomplished the first part 
of his task successfully, and a large army was got 

B 


4 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


together by the king in order to march to the assistance 
of his son. In the meanwhile, Gesualdo was sent 
back to announce the approach of reinforcements, 
but had the misfortune to fall into the hands of the 
besiegers. Thereupon the Greek Emperor suggested to 
his prisoner that he should go up underneath the walls 
of the beleaguered city and declare to the Duke his 
master that he had been unable to obtain reinforce- 
ments, and that the only course left open was to 
surrender the city. For this act of treachery, great 
rewards were promised him. Seeming to comply with 
the suggestion, Gesualdo was led out by his captors 
to within hailing distance of the walls, but instead of 
delivering the false message as he had agreed to do, 
he spoke to the Duke as follows :—*“ My lord, take 
heart, because this night the valiant Grimoaldo, your 
father, together with the flower of his troops, is 
encamped upon the banks of the river Sangro, and 
will speedily fall upon these barbarous invaders who 
will be forced to take refuge in flight if they are to 
escape the sharp points of the avenging Lombard 
spears. Wherefore I beseech you that my wife and 
children be commended to your care and protection, 
because this ruffianly crew, finding themselves to be 
deceived by me in not giving you false information, 
will without doubt slay me.” 

In this, Gesualdo guessed aright. His head was 
cut off and fired by a catapult into the city where it 
was taken to the Duke, who with great respect kissed 
it, and set upon it his ducal crown. And this, accord- 
ing to some, was the reason for the presence of a ducal 
crown on the family coat of arms, and the origin of the 
illustrious house which ever afterwards claimed as 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 5 


¢ 


their ancestor this Gesualdo “ who for this glorious 
act of devotion deserves to be numbered among the 
noblest heroes renowned in story.” 

The chronicles go on to say that after this vile and 
barbarous act, Constans precipitately raised the siege 
and retired on Naples. A body of Lombards, under 
the command of Count Capo Mitola, burning with 
righteous zeal to revenge the death of Gesualdo, and 
to punish the perfidious Greek, caught up with and 
attacked the Imperial rear-guard and cut it to pieces, 
none thereof escaping. And this, according to the 
testimony of Paulus Diaconus, took place near the 
river Calore. 

Although this Gesualdo has generally been con- 
sidered to be the founder of the noble family which 
bears his name, he does not seem to be a direct 
ancestor, at least in the male line, for in subsequent 
chronicles one reads of a Guglielmo (William) lord of 
Gesualdo and son of Roger Duke of Puglia, who was 
the illegitimate son of the great Robert Guiscard, the 
Norman conqueror of Southern Italy in the 11th 
century. This origin of the family is confirmed by 
inscriptions on buildings.and tombstones dedicated to 
its members. On the other hand, it is quite probable 
that the title and estate of Gesualdo came to this 
Guglielmo through his marriage with a female heiress 
of the earlier Lombard dynasty. 

From this time onward, the name of Gesualdo 
occurs frequently in the pages of Neapolitan history. 
The son of Guglielmo, named Elia, took the side of 
the Pope in the great struggle of Manfred with the 
Church, and was consequently deprived of his 
honours by the king and banished from Naples. On 


6 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


Manfred’s downfall he was reinstated. His son 
Niccolo was a great warrior and captain of the City of 
Naples and its district; another Elia was Grand Con- 
stable and Marshal of the kingdom in 1183; another 
Niccolo was Captain General and Justiciary of the 
Basilicata and Regent of the Vicaria in 1290; and 
Ruggiero was Marshal of the kingdom and Justiciary 
of Otranto 1385. We also read that Ladislaus, the 
first king of Naples belonging to the house of Aragon 
(c. 1400), a great lover of jousting, was thrown to 
earth by a Gesualdo of Gesualdo, “a youth of 
monstrous strength and great skill, who in jousting 
and martial feats unhorsed every adversary by the 
strength of his lance and the force of his arm.” | 

In 1494, Luigi, eleventh Lord of Gesualdo, and 
third Count of Consa, took part in a rebellion against 
the king, Ferrante II, and was deprived of his feudal 
rights. Two years later he was forgiven and rein- 
stated in his privileges, and promptly proceeded to 
rebel again. Accordingly the king, then Federico of 
Aragon, gave to his captain Gonsalvo Ferrandez de 
Corduba the city of Consa together with the castles of 
Sant Andria and Sant Mena, and other possessions 
formerly appertaining to the house of Gesualdo. 
However, this period of disgrace and eclipse did not 
last long. In 1506, as the result of an agreement 
arrived at by France and Spain, the house of 
Gesualdo received back its lands and fortresses, and 
in 1546 the principality of Venosa was added to its 
territorial possessions. 

The family distinguished itself in other fields as 
well as on the field of battle. Ascanio was Arch- 
bishop of Bari, and Alfonso was Cardinal Archbishop 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 7 


of Naples, and at one time had a good chance of being 
made Pope. From a dedication of a book of 
madrigals by Gasparo della Porta to the afore- 
mentioned Ascanio we learn that “ The family of 
Gesualdo has always held in esteem the art of music, 
and many knights and princes who have adorned 
every age, have often exchanged the pen for the 
sword, and musical instruments for the pen, as witness 
whereof the most excellent Prince of Venosa ’—the 
subject of the present study. His father, Fabrizio, 
according to a contemporary writer, Ammirato (Delle 
famiglie nobili di Napoli) was “ greatly appreciative 
of music, and in this noble art one finds many learned 
compositions of his which are held in great esteem by 
the cognoscenti. Moreover he maintained in his own 
house. an academy of all the musicians of the 
city, whom he supported and favoured most 
courteously.” But I am inclined to think that the 
writer has, to a certain extent at least, confused the 
father with the son, for nowhere else does one find it 
mentioned that Fabrizio was a composer. Neverthe- 
less it is certain that he was a prince of great culture 
and refinement. He had four children, two sons, 
Luigi and Carlo, and two daughters, Isabella and 
Vittoria. | 

Carlo, born about 1560 (some say 1557) was the 
second son, and consequently was not heir to the 
title and family estates. He seems to have evinced 
early in life a remarkable aptitude for music which 


? A less creditable member of the family figures in a novella of Bandello 
(Part II., No. 7), entitled, L’Abbate Gesualdo vuol rapir una giovane, e 
vesta vituperosamente da lei ferito, et ella, saltata nel fiume, s’aiuta (The 
Abbe Gesualdo, in attempting to molest a young woman, was grievously 
wounded by her, while she, leaping into the river, effected her escape). 


B2 


8 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


could only have been intensified and stimulated by his 
environment and opportunities. He is said to have 
been taught by Pomponio Nenna, but considering that 
the latter was only born in 1560 or possibly even later, 
this seems improbable. However that may be, he 
learnt composition and received instruction in the 
playing of several instruments. As an executant and 
improviser he rapidly attained to great proficiency; he 
was particularly renowned as a performer on the 
arciliuto, or bass-lute. In fact, his early reputation 
seems to be rather that of an executant than a com- 
poser, and of a musical Maecenas and art patron. A 
contemporary writer on music, Scipione Cerreto, in his 
book entitled Della prattica Musica, vocale et 
Strumentale, says of him: “ Not only did this Prince 
take great delight in music, but also for his pleasure 
and entertainment did keep at his court, at his own 
expense, many excellent composers, players and 
singers; so that I do often think that if this nobleman 
had lived at the time of the Greeks of antiquity, when 
one who was ignorant of music was considered 
uneducated, however great his knowledge of other 
things (as witness whereof the story of the philosopher 
Themistocles who was greatly discomfited and put to 
shame for not being able, at a certain banquet, to play 
upon some instrument) they would have raised up unto 
his memory a statue, not of mere marble, but of purest 
gold.” 

The names of many members of this private 
academy, or camerata—strikingly similar to the more 
famous one of Count Bardi in Florence at the same 
time—are known to us. Chief among them are 
Scipione Stella, a composer; Giandomenico Montella, 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 9 


organist, harpist, and lutenist; Fabrizio Filomarino, a 
skilled performer on the seven-stringed guitar; 
Scipione Dentice, a writer on music and player of the 
cembalo, who published five books of madrigals 
between 1591 and 1607; Antonio Grifone, a violist; 
Rocco Rodio, one of the most distinguished musicians 
of his time, especially on the theoretical side; and 
Leonardo Primavera dell’ Arpa, also one of the most 
eminent composers and executants of the period. 

This camerata was not exclusively musical, how- 
ever. Many poets used to be present at its gather- 
ings, among them Torquato Tasso, the foremost poet 
of his age. He seems to have been at that time 
staying with Count Manso, the same whom Milton 
visited during his Italian travels, and to whom he 
addressed the Latin poem beginning 

Haec quoque, Manse, tuae meditantur carmina laudi 

and the Count seems also to have been a friend of 
Gesualdo. The latter met Tasso about Easter in 
1588, and a close friendship was established between 
them which was only terminated by the poet’s death 
in 1595. Three of the latter’s poems are addressed to 
Gesualdo—the sonnets, which begin with the lines 
“Alta prole di regi eletta in terra” and “ Carlo, il 
vostro leon Cha nero il vello”’ (an allusion to the 
heraldic device of the Gesualdo family, a black lion 
with five red lilies upon a silver field), and a canzone 
in which are celebrated his most distinguished 
ancestors. There is little doubt, moreover, that this 


* It is interesting to note that in 1638 Milton sent home from Venice 
a number of books, “’ particularly a chest or two of choice music-books of 
the best masters flourishing about that time in Italy—namely Luca Marenzio, 
Monte Verdi, Horatio Vecchi, Cifra, the Prince of Venosa and several 
others ”’ (vide W. Godwin, Lives of Edward and John Philips, Appendix II.). 


1o CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


friendship played a very important part in Gesualdo’s 
artistic career. In the first place Tasso was the 
greatest living exponent of the literary form known 
as the madrigal. From 1592 onwards he sent his 
noble friend no less than 40, written expressly for him 
to set to music, eight of which are actually among the 
Prince’s published compositions, namely, Gelo ha 
Madonna il seno, Mentre Madonna, Se da si nobil 
mano, Felice primavera, Caro amoroso meo, Se cost 
dolce e il duolo, Se taccio il duol savanza, Non e 
questa lamano. It is quite possible that others of the 
forty were also set to music by Gesualdo, but have not 
survived. It is certainly beyond doubt that the pre- 
vailing spirit of his music, its passionate sorrow, 
elegiac tenderness, and eloquent despair, are essen- 
tially a musical paraphrase or reproduction of the 
spirit of Tasso’s poetry. Five letters from the poet 
to his friend have come down to us, and a free trans- 
lation of them will be found in the appendix. 

The young prince, together with his illustrious 
friend and members of the camerata, would often 
retire to his castle of S. Antonio in Mergellina, just 
outside Naples; and they would spend whole nights 
out in the bay, singing vzllotte, and madrigals, the 
prince accompanying himself on the lute. It is not 
recorded, unfortunately, what the classically-inclined 
nymphs and sirens of the Bay of Naples thought of 
this new Orpheus. They certainly could never have 
heard any music quite like it before; nor had anyone 
else for that matter. A new accent had come into 
music, a note of tragedy and despair that it had never 
before known. _ 7 

Somewhere about the year 1585, an event took 


PLATE II 





PiCTURE OF THE CARAFA FAMILY, IN WHICH IS PORTRAYED 
DONA MARIA D'AVALOS 


[ face p. 10 


Ss. -- 
Vat ae 


+ 


Re -. 


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¢ 





LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO Il 


place which was destined to be the cause of a most 
terrible tragedy in Carlo’s life. This event was the 
death of his elder brother Luigi, in virtue of which 
Carlo became the heir to the title and estates of the 
house of Gesualdo. It was therefore incumbent upon 
him to marry and produce descendants unless the 
direct line was to be extinguished and the estates 
dispersed. One can be fairly certain that the idea 
of marriage was uncongenial to his temperament, for 
at a time when the nobility were accustomed to marry 
at an extremely early age, Carlo had remained single 
until close on thirty. We are told too, by a con- 
temporary writer, that he cared for nothing but music 
(xox si diletta d’altro che di musica). However, the 
obligations of his position proved stronger than his 
personal inclinations, and in 1586 he was married to 
his first cousin, Donna Maria d’Avalos, who, though 
only 21, had already been married twice, and, what was 
essential, “ havea dati segni sufficienti di fecondita,”’ 
as the chronicler Ammirato observes. 

All contemporary chroniclers are agreed on one 
point, namely, the “surprising beauty” of Donna 
Maria, one of them even going so far as to say that 
she was reputed to be the most beautiful woman in the 
kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This may seem to us 
somewhat excessive praise if the portrait of her in the 
picture here produced of the Carafa family in the 
church of San Domenico Maggiore at Naples is at all 
like her. (She is the figure on the right reading a 
book). There she seems rather plain and ordinary, 
as many famous beauties of bygone ages do in their 


* “had already given sufficient proofs of fruitfulness.”’ 


12 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


portraits. Her first husband, whom she married at the 
early age of fifteen, was Federico Carafa, son of 
Ferrante Carafa, Marquis of S. Lucido, “ admired by 
the whole nobility as an angel from Heaven,” writes 
the rapturous and fulsome Ammirato. They had 
two children, but after three years Federico died 
suddenly, “forse per aver troppo reiterare con quellai 
congiungimenti carnali,” says another indiscreet 
chronicler. Two years later the young widow married 
Don Alfonso, son of the Marquis di Giuliano, who 
seems to have had a stronger constitution, or at least 
greater moderation and prudence, for in 1586 a papal 
dispensation for divorce was granted, followed almost 
immediately by her marriage to Carlo Gesualdo. 

The wedding was celebrated with truly regal 
magnificence, we are told, and feasting and rejoicing 
in the palace of San Severo, where the Prince lived, 
continued for many days. 

The marriage appears to have been extremely 
happy for some three or four years—which seems 
about as long as Donna Maria could endure one 
husband—and a son, Don Emmanuele, was born to 
them. (As we shall see later there was possibly also a 
second child). And then, in the year 1590 occurred 
the terrible event in Gesualdo’s life to which allusion 
has been made. 

The main sources of our information concerning 
the tragedy are two; firstly, a chronicle of the time 
called the MS. Corona; secondly, the /zformatione 
presa dalla Gran Corte della Vicaria. With the aid 
of these two valuable documents we are able to recon- 
struct the whole drama with considerable accuracy, 
although, as will be seen, they differ slightly on certain 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 13 


points. The first deals more fully with the events 
which led up to the tragedy, the second with the 
tragedy itself. Apart from their biographical 
relevance to our subject, they also afford us a 
fascinating insight into the life and manners of the 
times, and for that reason alone would deserve atten- 
tion. The translations which follow are by no means 
literal. I have preferred to sacrifice verbal accuracy 
to the preservation where possible, of the colour and 
atmosphere of the originals. 

“The enemy of the human race, unable to endure 
the spectacle of such great love and happiness, such 
conformity of tastes and desires in two married people, 
awakened in the bosom of Donna Maria impure 
desires and a libidinous and unbridled appetite for 
the sweetnesses of illicit love and for the beauty of a 
certain knight. This was Fabrizio Carafa, third Duke 
of Andria and seventh Count of Ruovo, reputed to be 
the handsomest and most accomplished nobleman of 
the city, in age not yet arrived at the sixth lustre, in 
manners so courteous and gracious, and of appearance 
so exquisite that from his features one would say that 
he was an Adonis; from his manner and bearing, a 
Mars. He had already long been married to Donna 
Maria Carafa, daughter of Don Luigi, Prince of 
Stigliano, a lady not only of great beauty but also of 
supreme goodness, by whom he had four children.” 
(It will be noted that the only person in the whole 
narrative who is not lovely beyond words is our poor 
Carlo. Donna Maria is the Venus, the Duke of 
Andria is the Mars, Don Carlo the Vulcan). 

“The equality of age in the two lovers, the 
similarity of their tastes, the numerous occasions 


14 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


presented by balls and feasts, the equal desire of both 
parties to take pleasure in each other, were all tinder 
to the fire which burnt in their breasts. The first 
messengers of their mutual flames were their eyes, 
which betrayed to their hearts with flashes of lightning 
the Etna which each cherished for the other. From 
glances they passed to words, from words to letters, 
given to and received by faithful messengers, in which 
they invited each other to sweet combat in the lists of 
love. The Archer, though reputed blind, was a very 
Argus in finding opportunities for coupling the two 
lovers, and knew well how to find a convenient place 
of meeting for the first occasion of their coming 
together, which was in a garden in the Borgo di Chiaia, 
in the pavilion whereof the Duke did lie concealed, 
awaiting his beloved who, on pretext of diversion and 
entertainment, was taken there. And she, while walk- 
ing there, affected to be overcome by some bodily pain, 
and separating herself from her escort, entered into 
the pavilion wherein lay the Duke, who, without the 
loss of one moment, put into execution the work of 
love. Nor was this the only occasion on which they 
came together for these enjoyments, but many and 
many times did they do so for many months in various 
and diverse places according to the opportunities pro- 
vided by fortune. Most frequently it was in the 
palace of the Princess, even in her yery bedchamber, 
through the aid of her maid-servant, that they did 
dally amorously together. This practice, having 
become frequent and familiar, came to the ears of. 
relations and friends of the Prince, amongst others to 
those of Don Giulio Gesualdo, uncle of the Prince 
Don Carlo. This Don Giulio had himself been 


! 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO I 


cs 


fiercely enamoured of the charms of Donna Maria, 
and had left no stone unturned in order to attain his 
desire; but, having been several times reproached by 
her for his foolish frenzy and warned that if he per- 
sisted in such thoughts and intentions she would 
divulge all to the Prince her husband, the unhappy 
Don Giulio, seeing that neither by gifts nor by 
entreaties nor by tears could he hope to win her to his 
desires, did cease to importune her, believing her to 
be a chaste Penelope. But when whispers came 
to his ears concerning the loves and pleasures of 
Donna Maria and the Duke, and after that he had 
assured himself of their truth with his own eyes from 
more than one certain sign, such was the wrath and 
fury which assailed him on finding that the strumpet 
did lie with others, that, without losing one moment 
of time, he straightway revealed all to the Prince. On 
hearing such grievous tidings, Don Carlo did at first 
seem more dead than alive; but, lest he should place 
credence too lightly in the asseverations of others, he 
resolved to assure himself of the truth of the matter 
himself. 

In the meanwhile the lovers had been warned that 
their secret was known, whereupon the Duke gave 
‘pause to his pleasures; but Donna Maria, unable to 
endure this remission, solicited the Duke that they 
should resume again. He then made known to her 
that their guilty passion had been detected, and repre- 
sented to her the dangers to both honour and life which 
would ensue to both alike if they did not keep their 
crapulous desires under control. 

In reply to these prudent reasonings, the Princess 
answered that if his heart was capable of fear he had 


16 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


better become a lackey; that nature had erred in 
creating a knight with the spirit of a woman, and in 
creating in her a woman with the spirit of a valorous 
knight. It did not behove him to reveal the vileness 
and cowardice of a common man, and if he were 
capable of sheltering fear in his heart he had better 
chase from out of it his love for her and never come 
into her presence again. | 

At this angry reply, which touched him to the very 
quick, the Duke went in person to the offended lady, 
and spoke to her as follows :—‘‘ Fair lady, if you 
would that I should die for love of you, I shall be 
greatly honoured in being the victim of your beauty. 
I have the courage to meet my death, but not the con- 
stancy to endure yours. For if I die, assuredly you 
will not live. This is my fear which makes me coward ; 
I have not strength to endure this blow. If you see 
no way to avert a calamity, give me at least the assur- 
ance that the Duke of Andria alone will be the victim 
of your husband’s vengeance, and then I shall let you 
see whether I am afraid of steel. You are too cruel, 
not to me, who still finds you too merciful, but to your 
own beauty, in exposing it thus to moulder away 
before its due time in the darkness and silence of the 
tomb.” 

To these words the Princess made answer thus :— 
“ My lord Duke, one moment of your absence is more 
death-dealing to me than a thousand deaths which 
might come to me through my delights. If I die with 
you I shall nevermore be separated from you, but if 
you go away from me I shall die far apart from all that 
my heart holds dear, which is your self. Make up 
your mind, then, either to show yourself faithless by 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 17 


departing from me, or to prove yourself loyal by not 
abandoning me. As for the reasons which you have 
given me, you should have taken thought of them 
before, not when the arrow has sped and it is too late. 
I have courage enough and strength enough to 
endure the cold steel, but not the bitter frost of your 
absence. You had no right to love me, nor I to love 
you, if we were capable of entertaining such base and 
cowardly thoughts. To conclude—I so wish and so 
command, and to my order I brook no reply unless 
that you would lose me for ever.” 

To this impassioned speech the unhappy Duke, 
bowing humbly in token of submission, replied :— 
** Since you wish to die, I shall die with you; such 1s 
your wish, so be it.” 

And so did they continue in their delights. 

The Prince, now alert and on the watch, having 
had all the locks of the doors in the palace secretly 
removed or damaged, and particularly those of the 
rooms wherein the Princess was wont to dally 
amorously with her paramour, gave out one day his 
intention of going to the chase, as was his custom, 
declaring also that he would not return that evening. 
Accordingly he set out in hunting attire and on horse- 
back, accompanied by a numerous retinue of intimates 
and followers, and made as if to go to that place 
known as Gli Astroni, having previously left orders 
with some of his servants who were privy to the 
secret, to leave open at night all the necessary doors, 
but in such wise that they should yet retain the appear- 
ance of being closed. Then the Prince took his 
departure, and went to conceal himself in the house of 
one of his relations. 


183 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


The Duke, having learnt that the Prince had 
departed upon a hunting expedition and would not 
return that evening, set forth at four hours of the 
night’ in search of his usual pleasures, and was 
received by Donna Maria with her wonted affection. 
And after that they had solaced themselves at their 
ease, they fell asleep and thereby lost both body and 
soul. For in the meanwhile the Prince, having 
returned secretly to the palace at midnight, accom- 
panied by a troup of armed men chosen from among 
his intimates, made his way rapidly to the bedchamber 
of the Princess, and with one blow broke open the 
door. Entering furiously he discovered the lovers in 
bed together; at which sight the state of mind of the 
umhappy prince can be imagined. But quickly 
shaking off the dejection into which this miserable 
spectacle had plunged him, he slew with innumerable 
dagger thrusts the sleepers before they had time to 
waken. 

And after he had ordered that their dead 
bodies should be dragged from the room and left 
exposed, he made a statement of his reasons for this 
butchery, and departed with his familiars to his city of 
Venosa. 

And this tragedy took place on the night of the 
16th October, 1590. The bodies of the wretched 
lovers remained exposed all the following morning in 
the midst of the hall, and all the city flocked to see the 
pitiful sight. 

The lady’s wounds were all in the belly, and more 
particularly in those parts which she ought to have 


? The first hour of the night is 6.30—7.30 by our time. Consequently 
four hours of the night is 9.30. 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 19 


kept honest; and the Duke was wounded even more 
grievously. 

Too beautiful, too alike, too unfortunate were this 
unhappy couple. 

At the hour of vespers the bodies were removed 
for burial amidst the lamentation of the entire city. 

Such was the end of impure desires. 

That is all we learn from the Success tragici et 
amorosi de Silvio et Ascanio Corona. The Venetian 
ambassador to Naples mentions a few other details in 
one of his communications to his government. After 
giving a succinct account of the tragedy, he adds that 
“these three princely families (i., Gesualdo, 
d’Avalos, and Carafa) were intimately connected with 
and related to almost all the other noble families of 
the kingdom, and everyone seems stunned by the 
horror of this event. The illustrious Lord Viceroy 
himself was greatly dismayed at the news, for he loved 
and greatly esteemed the Duke as a man who both by 
nature and through application was the possessor of 
all the most noble and worthy qualities which apper- 
tain to a noble prince and a valorous gentleman. 
Various ministers of justice, together with officials of 
the Courts have been to the palace, and after making 
various inquiries commanded that all persons con- 
nected with the case should be sequestered and 
guarded in their own houses; but up to the present, 
nothing more has been heard of the matter.” 

And now we come to the verbatim report of the 
proceedings of the Grand Court of the Vicaria, a 
copy of which, by a rare stroke of good fortune, is still 
extant, although the original document has disap- 
peared from the Neapolitan Archives. 

Cc 


20 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


It consists of three separate depositions : first, that 
of the examining magistrates and officials; secondly, 
the narrative of the servant-in-waiting to Donna Maria; 
and thirdly, and most interesting, the evidence of 
Don Carlo’s personal servant. Many details in these 
will be found to be at variance with the account given 
already; where these discrepancies occur, it is only 
natural that we should give the preference to the 
official narrative. For example, the trap laid by the 
Prince by announcing his intention of going hunting— 
so reminiscent of the device of the Sultan Schahriar in 
the “ Arabian Nights ’’—is clearly erroneous. 

Informatione presa dalla Gran Corte della Vicaria. 
Die 27 octobris, 1590, iz quo habitat Don Carolus 
Gesualdus.”” 

“As it has been brought to the notice of the Grand 
Court of the Vicaria that in the house of the most 
illustrious Don Carlo Gesualdo, in the place of 
S. Domenico Maggiore, the illustrious Lady Donna 
Maria d’Avalos, wife of the said Don Carlo, and the 
illustrious Don Fabrizio Carafa, Duke of Andria, had 
been done to death: the illustrious. gentlemen Don 
Giovan Tommaso Salamanca, Fulvio di Costanzo, 
Royal Councillors and Criminal Judges of the Grand 
Court, the Magnificent Fiscal Procurator, and I, the 
undersigned Master of the Grand Court, held con- 
ference in the house of the aforesaid Don Carlo 
Gesualdo. Onentering into the upper apartments of the 
said house, in the furthest room thereof, was found 
dead, stretched out upon the ground, the most 

illustrious Don Fabrizio Carafa, Dukeof Andria. The 


1 Evidence taken by the Grand Court of the Vicaria on the 27th October, 
1590, in the house of Don Carlo Gesualdo. 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 2% 


only clothing upon the body was a woman’s nightdress, 
worked with lace, with a collar of black silk and with 
one sleeve red with blood, and the said Duke of Andria 
was covered with blood and wounded in many places, 
as follows: an arquebus wound in the left arm pass- 
ing from one side of the elbow to the other and also 
through the breast, the sleeve of the said night-dress 
being scorched; many and divers wounds in the chest 
made by sharp steel weapons, also in the arms, in the 
head, and in the face; and another arquebus wound in 
the temple above the left eye whence there was an 
abundant flow of blood. And in the self-same room 
was found a gilt couch with curtains of green cloth, 
and within the said bed was found dead the above- 
mentioned Donna Maria d’Avalos clothed in a night- 
dress, and the bed was filled with blood. On being 
seen by the aforesaid gentlemen and by me, the afore- 
said Master, the body was recognised to be that of 
Donna Maria d’Avalos, lying dead with her throat cut; 
also with a wound in the head, in the right temple, a 
dagger thrust in the face, more dagger wounds in the 
right hand and arm, and in the breast and flank two 
sword thrusts. And on the said bed was found a 
man’s shirt with frilled starched cuffs, and on a chair 
covered in crimson velvet, near the said bed, was 
discovered a gauntlet of iron, and an iron glove, 
burnished; also a pair of breeches of green cloth, a 
doublet of yellow cloth, a pair of green silk hose, a 
pair of white cloth pantaloons, and a pair of cloth 
shoes, all of which vestments were without injury, 
whether sword thrusts or bloodstains. And at the 
side of the apartment of the lady, the door of the said 
room was found to be smashed at the foot and could 


22 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


not be closed by means of the handle, for that the 
injury was made in such a way that it could not lock, 
nor would the handle hold when placed in the aper- 
ture, and likewise the lock of the door had been bent 
and twisted in such a way that the key could not enter 
the keyhole, and consequently the said door could not 
be locked. 

And on entering into the antechamber wherein 
was the small door opening on to the spiral staircase 
which led down to the apartment of Don Carlo, Pietro 
Bardotti, servant in waiting to said Don Carlo 
Gesualdo, gave up to the said gentlemen a key, saying 
that when he entered the room where he had found 
the Lord Duke and Donna Maria d’Avalos lying 
dead, he found the said key upon a chair beside the 
bed; and this key, which opened the door of the room 
of the apartment in the said house, he did declare to 
be false. And the key being taken by me, hereunder 
signed Domenico Micene, by order of the above- 
mentioned gentlemen, the lock of the door in the said 
room was inspected, and another ordinary key was 
found in the lock thereof. And on essaying the said 
key which had been given by the said Pietro, it was 
found to open the lock of the door in the said room 
as well as the ordinary key. 

And at the same time by order of the said gentle- 
men, two coffins were brought into the said room, and 
with them came the Reverend Father Carlo Mastrillo, 
a Jesuit father, together with two other Jesuit priests. 
And when they had washed the body of the said Duke 
of Andria the following wounds were clearly discerned 
upon him, namely: arquebus wounds in the left arm, 
through the elbow and in the flank with two shots, 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 23 


one arquebus wound about the eye from side to side, 
some of the brains having come out; and he was also 
wounded in many places in the head, face, neck, chest, 
stomach, flanks, arms, hands and shoulders—all by 
sword thrusts, deep, many of them passing through the 
body from front to back. This body had been found 
immediately upon entering the said room, three paces 
distance from the couch wherein lay the said Donna 
Maria d’Avalos. And underneath the said body were 
many marks upon the floor made by swords passing 
through the said body and penetrating deeply into the 
said floor. And after that the said body had been 
washed and dressed in a pair of black silk breeches 
and a jerkin of black velvet, it was taken by the 
Reverend Don Carlo Mastrillo, who had come to 
receive the body on behalf of the wife of the said Lord 
Duke, the Countess of Ruvo his grandmother, and the 
Lord Prior of Ungheria his uncle. And when it had 
been placed in a coffin by order of the said illustrious 
gentlemen, the body was given to the Jesuit fathers 
above mentioned, who placed it in a coach and 
departed with it; and the said clothes which were 
found upon the chair within the said room, belonging 
to the said Duke, together with the gauntlet, glove 
and false key, were consigned unto me, the said 
Domenico Micene, that I should have them in safe 
keeping. 

And then there came the illustrious Marchioness di 
Vico, the aged aunt of the said Donna Maria d’Avalos, 
in order that she might dress her; and after that she 
had been dressed by the servants of the house she was 
placed in the other coffin and consigned to the care of 
the illustrious Lady Duchess of Traietto, according to 

C2 


24. CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


the wish and request of the illustrious Lady Sveva 
Gesualdo, mother of the said Lady Maria, and was 
carried to the church of S. Domenico. 

And further it is attested that the said Lords 
Justiciary and the Fiscal Lord Advocate, on descend- 
ing to the apartment on the middle floor wherein the 
said Don Carlo is alleged to have slept, found in one 
of the rooms three halberds, one of which had a twisted 
point, and all three soiled and stained with blood, and 
also in the same room a round shield of iron, large, 
and with black silk fringes, a short sword with a silver 
hilt, a long sword similarly gilt, and two wax torches 
which had been left behind in the said house. 


In witness whereof 


By order of the above-mentioned illustrious 
gentlemen, | Dominico Micene, Master of the 
Grand Court, have written the above account with 
mine own hand. 

Evidence examined and taken by me, Master 
Giovanni Sanchez, with the assistance of Master 
Mutio Surgenti, fiscal advocate, by order of the 
Excellent Masters, concerning the death of the 
illustrious gentleman Don Fabrizio Carafa, Duke 
of Andria, and of the Lady Maria d’ Avalos. The 
28th October, 1590, in the house of the illustrious 
Duke of Torremaggiore, lately inhabited by Don 
Carlo Gesualdo and Donna Maria d Avalos. 


Silvia Albana, aged 20, being as she said, maid- 
servant to the aforesaid Lady Maria d’Avalos, and 
keeper of her wardrobe and of all things which con- 
cerned her person, and having served her mistress for. 
six years, bore witness on oath. On being examined 


| 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO a5 


and questioned, what did witness know concerning 
the death of the said Lady Maria d’Avalos, and who 
killed her, and in what manner? she answered, that 
the truth of what she knew was as follows :— 

On the Tuesday evening, which was the 26th day’ 
of the present month, that is, eight days ago, the Lady 
Donna Maria, after that she had dined, retired to rest 
at about four hours of the night. Witness, together 
with one Laura Scala, likewise servant in attendance 
on the said Lady, did undress her and left her in bed. 
Whereupon Laura then retired to bed, as she was wont 
to do, in the room adjoining that wherein the said lady 
was reposing, and witness set about preparing her 
garments for the next day. 

Then did the said Lady Donna Maria call witness 
to her; and when she had come into the room, the said 
lady asked for clothes wherewith to dress herself. 
And in reply to witness’s enquiry why she wished to 
dress, she made reply that she had heard the whistle 
of the Duke of Andria and wished to go to the 
window—which witness had seen the lady do many 
times before, and on several occasions, when the moon 
was shining, she, the witness, had seen the Duke of 
Andria in the street. And she did recognise him by 
moonlight from having often seen him by.daytime, 
and knew him well, having often heard him con- 
versing with the said lady. 

And the said lady having ordered that garments 
be brought to her, witness brought forth a petticoat 
and a shawl for her head; and the said lady, being 
dressed, did go to open the window, and went out. 


* Obviously an error of the copyist. 


26 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


upon the balcony, first ordering the said witness to 
stand on guard and to warn her if she should hear any 
astir in the house or in the courtyard. And witness 
did as she was told; and as Lady Maria opened the 
window she heard five hours of the night striking. 
After half-an-hour, that is, at five-and-a-half hours of 
the night, the said Lady Donna Maria summoned 
witness to close the window and to undress her again. 
Accordingly witness disrobed her; and when that the 
Lady Donna Maria had retired to bed, she ordered 
that another night-dress be brought to her, as that 
which she was wearing was wet with sweat. And 
witness brought her one which had a collar of worked 
black silk and a pair of cuffs of the same colour, and 
left it upon the bed as she was commanded to do— 
which night-dress witness saw on the Duke of Andria 
when she discovered him in the morning, in the very 
room wherein the said Lady Donna Maria did sleep, 
dead upon the ground, covered with blood, and 
wounded in many places. And after the said Lady 
Donna Maria had told her to leave the night-dress 
which she had brought upon the bed, she asked that a 
candle might be lit and placed upon the chair; and 
accordingly witness lit a wax candle and placed it 
upon the chair. And when witness was retiring for 
the night the said Lady Donna said to her, “ Shut the 
door without turning the handle and do not come in, 
unless I call you.” And witness did as she was told, 
and as the said Lady Donna Maria had told her not 
to come in unless she was called, she did not wish to 
undress but laid herself down upon her bed fully 
attired, and while reading a book fell asleep. 

While still asleep she heard the door of the room 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 27 


wherein she was, which stood at the head of a flight of 
stairs leading to the middle floor on which the Lord 
Don Carlo Gesualdo did live, violently opened. And 
on awakening with a great start it did seem to her as 
if she were dreaming and did see, while the lamp in 
the room wherein she lay was going out, three men 
entering whom witness knew not by sight. And 
scarcely had she seen them than they approached the 
room wherein slept the said Lady Donna Maria; and 
she saw that one of them, who was the last in order, 
was carrying a halberd, but could not say if the others 
were carrying arms. And speedily the said men 
entered into the inner room, and witness heard two 
loud reports, and almost at the same moment the 
words, “ There, it is done.” Hardly had she heard 
these words spoken than by the staircase she perceived 
the Lord Don Carlo Gesualdo, husband of the Lady 
Donna Maria, entering the room wherein witness was 
sleeping ; and together with the said Lord Don Carlo 
came Pietro Bardotti with two lighted torches in his 
hands. And the said Lord Don Carlo was carrying a 
halberd, and said to witness, ‘“‘ Traitress, I shall kill 
you. This time you shall not escape me.’ And 
having ordered the said Pietro Bardotti not to permit 
her to depart, he entered into the room of the said 
Lady Donna Maria. And as he went in, he ordered 
the said Pietro Bardotti to fix one of the torches which 
he was carrying at the side of the door. The said 
Pietro did so, whereat witness fled into the room 
where the child was, and, lingering there a moment, 
did hear the said Don Carlo in the room saying, 
“Where are they?” And the nurse besought him 
that for the love of God he would not do hurt to the 


28 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


child. Whereupon the Lord Don Carlo having com- 
manded that the closet in which the lady was wont to 
keep her jewels should be closed, went out. Then 
witness, hearing no sounds proceeding from the room, 
came out from under the bed where she had been 
hiding and saw the above-mentioned Pietro Bardotti 
with a lighted torch. And he said to her, “ Do not 
fear, Don Carlo has departed.” And on witness 
asking him what had happened, Bardotti replied, 
“ Both of them are dead.” | 

Witness had not the courage to enter the room 
until the morning, when the other servants came up and 
it was already light; and then they did all go in 
together and saw the Lady Donna Maria d’Avalos 
lying dead with many wounds, in her own bed, upon 
which lay a man’s shirt, and on a chair near the bed a 
pair of green silk knee-breeches, a pair of stockings, 
and white underclothing; and near the door a dead 
body with many wounds and covered with blood; and 
on coming close she recognised it to be the body of 
the Duke of Andria. 

And such was the evidence of witness, who added 
that the Duke was wearing the lady’s night- 
dress. 

On being asked if she could say whether the 
clothes which were upon the chair were soiled, and to 
whom they belonged, witness answered that the 
clothes which she saw were unsoiled and unspotted, 
and that she believed them to belong to the Duke of 
Andria, but could not say for certain. 

On being asked what time it would have been 
when the three men of whom she spoke, and Don 
Carlo after them, came up the staircase, witness 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 29 


replied that when she came out from under the bed, as 
told above, the clock struck seven. 

On being asked whether she knew the whereabouts 
of Don Carlo Gesualdo, and who had gone with him, 
witness replied that she did not know, because from 
the time when they left until Don Giovanni came 
thither with the other Lords Justiciary and the Fiscal 
Lord Advocate, she had been kept shut up in the 
women’s apartments, and had not spoken with 
anyone. 

On being asked what had happened to the body of 
Donna Maria, she said that on the Wednesday morn- 
ing the Marchioness di Vico had come and had had 
the body dressed, and witness had helped in so doing; 
and thus dressed, the body had been placed in a coffin, 
and she understood that it had been taken to the church 
of S. Domenico. And this was all she knew. And 
being asked how the Duke gained entrance, she 
answered that she did not know. 

Silvia Albana bore witness as above. 

On the same day and in the same place, Pietro 
Malitiale, otherwise Bardotti, aged about forty, said 
that he was in the service of the Lord Don Carlo 
Gesualdo as a personal servant, and that he had 
served the family for twenty-eight years. Giving 
evidence on oath, he was questioned concerning the 
occurrence and his knowledge thereof, firstly, where at 
present was Don Carlo, and how long was it since he 
had seen him? He answered that at the moment he 
did not know where he was, and that he had not seen 
him since the Tuesday evening, a week past; and 
that on the Wednesday morning, when he left, it 
would be about seven hours of the night. He had 


30 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


departed on horseback, but witness himself did not 
see his departure. 

On being asked why Don Carlo left that night, 
and with whom he had gone, he replied : “ My Lords, 
I shall tell you the truth. On the Tuesday evening, 
which was the 26th day of the present month, the said 
Lord Don Carlo dined at three hours of the night in 
his apartments on the middle floor, undressed him- 
self, and retired to bed as he was wont to do every 
evening; and those who served him at supper were 
witness, Pietro de Vicario, a man servant, Alessandro 
Abruzzese, and a young priest who was a musician. 
And when he had finished dinner the aforesaid Pietro 
de Vicario and the others departed while witness 
remained behind to lock the door. After he had 
secured the door the Lord Don Carlo composed him- 
self to slumber, and witness covered him up and, 
after undressing, went to bed. Being thus asleep, it 
would be about six hours of the night when he heard 
the Lord Don Carlo calling for him that he should 
bring him a glass of water. Witness went to the well 
to draw water, and when he had descended to the 
courtyard he noticed that the postern gate, opening on 
to the street, was open at that late hour. And on 
taking up the water he beheld Don Carlo up and 
dressed in doublet and hose. And he told witness to 
give him also his long cloak to put on. When witness 
asked him whither he was going at such a late hour of 
the night, he replied that he was going a-hunting; 
and on witness observing that it was not the time for 
going to the chase, the said Lord Don Carlo replied 
to him: “ You shall see what hunting I am going to 
do.” So saying he finished dressing, and told witness 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 31 


to light two torches; which done, the said Lord Don 
Carlo drew from beneath the bed a curved sword 
which he gave to witness to carry under his arm, also 
a dagger and a poignard together with an arquebus. 
Taking with him all these weapons, he went to the 
staircase which led up to the apartment of the Lady 
Donna Maria d’Avalos, and while mounting by it the 
said Lord Don Carlo spoke to the witness, saying : 
“Tam going to massacre the Duke of Andria and that 
strumpet Donna Maria.” And while mounting the 
stairs, witness saw three men each of whom was carry- 
ing a halberd and an arquebus; which men, witness 
attested, threw open the door at the head of the stairs 
which led to the apartments of Donna Maria. And 
when the three men had entered into the said apart- 
ment of Donna Maria, the Lord Don Carlo said to 
them: “Slay that scoundrel together with that 
strumpet! Shall a Gesualdo be made a cuckold?” 
(A casa Gesualdo corna). Then witness heard the 
sound of firearms, but heard no voices, because he had 
remained outside the room. After that he had 
remained a short while thus, the three men came out, 
and he recognised one of them to be Pietro de Vicario, 
man-servant, another to be Ascanio Lama, and the 
third to be a confidential servant called Francesco; 
and they departed by the same staircase by which they 
had come up armed. Then Don Carlo himself came 
out, his hands covered with blood; but he turned back 
and re-entered the chamber of Donna Maria, saying : 
“T do not believe they are dead.” Then the said 
witness entered with a torch and perceived a dead 
body near the door. The said Don Carlo went up to 
the bed of the Lady Donna Maria and dealt her still 


32 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


more wounds, saying: “ I do not believe she is dead.” 
He then commanded witness not to let the women 
scream, and the said Lord Don Carlo Gesualdo 
descended the staircase by which he had come; and 
witness heard a great noise of horses below, and in the 
morning saw neither the Lord Don Carlo, nor his con- 
fidential servant, nor any of the members of the Court 
or of the household of the Lord Don Carlo. 

And this is that which the witness knew. 

Signum cructs. 

So ends the /xzformatione preso dalla Gran Corte 
della Vicaria. The copyist of the document adds 
that the inquiry was discontinued at the command of 
the Viceroy, in view of the manifest justification for 
the Prince’s act in slaying the Duke of Andria and his 
own erring spouse. But this would seem merely to 
be a personal opinion of the scribe, and not at all in 
accordance with the general sentiment which, as we 
shall see, was ranged almost unanimously on the side 
of the guilty pair. 

Other accounts of this terrible deed are to be 
found, with slightly varying details, in the minor 
literature of the time, but none of them are so 
authentic or circumstantial as the two above repro- 
duced. Mention, however, should be made of the 
version of Brantéme in his celebrated chronique 
scandaleuse, the Vies des Dames Galantes (Discours 
premier, sur les dames qui font amour et leurs maris 
cocus). After describing the occurrence with many 
inaccuracies, he adds that :— 

“Il y eut des parens de ladite dame morte qui en 
furent trés-dolents et trés-estomacqués, jusques a sen 
vouloir ressentir par la mort et le meurtre, ainsi que la 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 33 


loy du pays le porte, mais d’autant qu’elle avoit esté 
tuée par des marauts de valets et esclaves qui ne 
méritoient d’avoir leurs mains teintes d’un si beau et 
si noble sang, et sur ce seul sujet s’en vouloient 
ressentir et rechercher le mary, fust par justice ou 
autrement, et non s'il eust fait le coup luy-mesme de 
Sa propre main; car n’en fust esté autre chose, ny 
recherché. 

“Voila une sotte et bizarre opinion et formalisa- 
tion, dont je m’en rapporte a nos grand discoureurs 
et bons jurisconsultes, pour scavoir, quel acte est plus 
énorme, de tuer sa femme de sa propre main qui l’a 
tante aimé, ou de celle d’un maraut esclave. 

“Tl y a force raisons 4 déduire la-dessus, dont je 
me passeray de les alléguer, craignant qu’elles soyent 
trop foibles au prix de celles de ces grands. 

“Jay ouy conter que le viceroy, en scachant la 
conjuration, en advertit l’amant, voire ’amante; mais 
telle estoit leur destinée, qui se devoit ainsi finer par 
si belles amours. 

“Cette dame estoit fille de dom Carlo d’Avalos, 
second frére du marquis de Pescayre, auquel, si on 
eust fait un pareil tour en aucunes de ses amours que 
je scay, il y a long-temps qu’il fust esté mort.’”’ 

Another and greater French writer, Anatole 
France, made the tragic occurrence the subject of one 





» There were some among the relatives of the said lady who were deeply 
grieved and offended thereat, even to the point of wishing to revenge them- 
selves by death and murder, according to the laws of the country; all the 
more because she had been done to death by knaves and servants whose hands 
were unworthy to shed such fair and noble blood, and for this reason alone 
they would have had vengeance upon the husband, either by law or other- 
wise, and not if he had dealt the stroke with his own hand; but nought 
came of it. 

Here indeed is a crazy and extravagant notion, concerning which I invite 
the judgment of our great lawyers and good jurisconsults: namely, whether 


34. CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


of his finest short stories, entitled ‘‘ Histoire de Doria 
Maria d Avalos et de Don Fabricio Duc d’ Andria.” 
It is to be found in the volume entitled Le Puits de 
Sainte Claire, but as it is almost entirely a work of 
imagination it does not concern us here. 

The Sansevero palace in the Piazza San 
Domenico where the tragic event took place, still 
exists, although the great earthquake of 1688 which 
devastated Naples necessitated its restoration. 
Through the kindness of Sig. Salvatore di Giacomo, 
however, I am _ fortunately able to reproduce 
here a contemporary painting which shows the palace 
as it was at the time when it was inhabited by 
Gesualdo. 

It is related that after the flight of the Prince, the 
palace was closed and remained unoccupied for a 
considerable time; but that every night at the hour of 
midnight the people who lived in the vicinity would 
hear a loud and anguished cry, and the white phantom 
of Donna Maria would be seen gliding in the dark- 
ness through the alleys and passages which sur- 
rounded the palace. To this very day the story is 
told among the common people of Naples, and the 
palace has never lost its sinister reputation. In recent 
times the sudden collapse of part of the building, 
involving loss of life, was at once attributed to the 


it is more monstrous to kill the wife you have loved by your own hand or 
by that of a vile lackey. 

Many arguments can be brought forward on this score which I will 
forbear to mention, fearing that they should seem trivial beside those of such 
eminent persons. 

I have heard it said that the Viceroy warned her and her lover on hearing 
of the plot which was afoot; but such was their destiny, and the fated end 
of such sweet loves. 

This lady was daughter to Don Carlo d’Avalos, second brother of the 
Marquis of Pescara, who would himself have long been dead if any such 
misfortune had befallen him in any of his amours of which I have heard tell.”” 


bE a aovf 8891 JO ANVNOHLUVA AUNOAAT OUNAAAS NVS OZZV1Vd 





Il ALW 1d 





LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 35 


working of a fatal curse which has rested on it 
throughout the three centuries and more that have 
passed since the events which we have been narrating 
took place. 

There was another and later inhabitant of the 
palace, however, to whom part at least of this evil 
reputation must be ascribed. This was Signor 
Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of San Severo, who 
lived there about the middle of the 18th century. He 
seems to have dabbled in science, or alchemy; and 
during his occupation of the palace wandering 
tongues of flame and infernal lights were often seen 
to flicker through the windows on the ground floor, 
which look out on the Vico Sansevero—and some- 
times the flames were red, sometimes blue, or even a 
lurid green, and strange sounds also were to be heard. 
In the vivid and superstitious imagination of the 
Neapolitan /azzarone, this Prince is represented as a 
kind of Nostradamus or magician who possessed the 
power of raising the dead and of fasting indefinitely. 
He is also said to have been accustomed to drive 
about over the sea in a carriage drawn by super- 
natural horses. 

But to return to Gesualdo. He went straight to 
the Viceroy, Don Giovanni Zuniga, Count of 
Miranda, and acquainted him with what had 
happened. The Viceroy advised him to put himself 
out of reach of the relations of the murdered couple, 
who belonged to two of the richest and most powerful 
families of the kingdom. The Prince therefore 
retired to his castle at Gesualdo, which he proceeded 
to fortify against a possible attack. Indeed, such was 
his fear of vengeance that he even went so far as to 


D 


36 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


cut down all the forests and thickets which stood 
around his stronghold, lest they should serve to 
conceal the approach of hostile forces. 

These precautions were not by any means super- 
fluous. The nobility of that time, we are told by a 
contemporary writer, “ were arrogant and presump- 
tuous, greatly disposed to vengeance,’ and 
particular examples of the length to which affronted 
honour or amour propre would go are so numerous 
as to be almost commonplace. 

“The exaggerated insistence on the point of 
honour resulted in many deeds of violence, in brutal 
and callous murders on the slightest pretext. ; 
The Marchese di Polignac was imprisoned for 
venturing to challenge so exalted a person as the 
Prince of Salerno, who had insulted him. But this 
was not enough for the outraged Prince. One morn- 
ing the Marchese, hearing a loud noise, rushed to his 
window to see what had happened, and was instantly 
shot dead by a hired bravo. The noise had been 
made by the Prince’s orders. Elaborate duels were 
fought for the most absurd reasons. Thus a pet dog 
belonging to the Principessa di Montaguti was stolen 
by a maid and sold to a Spinelli, who refused to return 
it. He was challenged by her son, and in the duel 
which followed, eight combatants fought on each side. 
The whole party caroused together till daybreak when 
—ripiglati gli sdegni—they proceeded to the Piazza 
Vittoria to fight. One of them was killed, and the 
rest took refuge in the neighbouring churches. The 
other side only succeeded in wounding a Prince 
Pietrapasia, who retired to his villa at Posilipo. One 
day a boatload of the friends of the dead man rowed 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 37 


round to the villa, and on his appearance opened fire 
on him, but failed to hit him.” 

In such a highly irascible age it was obviously well 
to take some precautions against possible reprisals of 
a similar nature. But Gesualdo had even more 
particular reasons to be on his guard against an 
attempt at revenge. The murdered Duke had a 
certain nephew called Fra Giulio Carafa, who, to say 
the least, seems to have been of a somewhat impulsive 
disposition. It is related of him that one fine day a 
certain poet, named Giovan Battista Arcuccio, was 
passing along the street, reciting his own poems as 
he went, in a state of lyrical exaltation, at the top of 
his voice. Fra Giulio Carafa, who happened to be 
standing at the time in front of his house, requested 
him to speak in a slightly more subdued tone. A 
few heated words ensued, after which the gentle friar, 
raising aloft the stick which he was carrying, smote 
the unfortunate poet upon the head and killed him. 
It is possible that the particular poem he was reciting 
was a very bad one, but even so the death penalty 
seems to us somewhat excessive. What might not 
Fra Giulio do under stronger provocation? One 
trembles in anticipation for the luckless Prince; but, 
as it happened, Fra Giulio, having as we have seen, 
avenged the perpetration of a poem by committing a 
murder, proceded now to avenge a murder by writing 
a poem—a sonnet in which he abused our friend the 
Prince in the most vehement language : 


O barbaro crudel fier omicida 
Di te stesso ministro e di vergogna, 


+ Times Literary Supplement, August 7th, 1924. Leading article, 
** Naples under the Viceroys.”’ | 


38 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


Il fuggir si lontan che ti bisogna? 

Forse, morto il buon Duca, ancor ti snida? 
Gia non te segue Astrea, anzi ti affida 

Pia di quel che tua mente stolta agogna. 
Che temi dunque? forse ti rampogna 
Lo spirto invitto suo, forse ti sgrida? 
Esser ben puo, poi che l’offesa grave 

Fu troppo, mentre avea nudo il suo petto: 
Con molt’ armi troncasti il suo bel stame. 
Qual ragion vuol che le tue macchie lave 
Sangue sparso per man di gente infame 
Se errasti tu, che mal guardasti il letto?' 


Altogether the affair caused the shedding of a 
great deal of innocent verse. All the poets of Naples, 
from the great Tasso down to the obscurest rhymester 
of the age, seem to have burst out into a simultaneous 
howl of anguish over the fate of the two unfortunate 
lovers. A large number of these lamentations have 
been preserved, and though not always, or even 
generally, of high poetic value, they nevertheless 
possess a certain interest for us. In all of them, 
without a single exception, the sympathies are entirely 
on the side of the lovers; even Tasso, whose close 
friendship with Gesualdo, one would have thought, 
might have inclined him to take a different view, 
mourns the sad fate of the two unhappy lovers without 
seeming to reprove their conduct. But this is only in 
accordance with the spirit of the time, which regarded 





+ “* © barbarous, cruel and savage murderer, to your own self minister 
of shame, what need have you to fly away so far? Although the good 
Duke is dead, still thou fleest? Already Astrea ceases to pursue you, and 
even grants you more than which your foolish mind desires. What then 
is it that you fear? Perchance his unconquered spirit causes you remorse, 
perchance reviles you. It might well be so, since the offence was too grave ; 
seeing that when he was defenceless, with many weapons you severed the 
thread of his life. How could you think that blood poured out by the 
hands of vile creatures could wash out your dishonour while you were 
straying, and caring so little to keep your couch inviolate ?”’ 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 39 


with a complaisance bordering almost on_ tacit 
approval, the infidelity of wives. This point of view 
is perhaps best summed up in the words of 
Bartolomeo Gottifredo, in his treatise called Specchio 
d Amore, where he judges “ Piene di gentilezza, di 
cortesia, e d’umanita una giovane, la quale ai dolci 
preghi d’un amante, commossa, e da’ suoi martiri, 
pietosa divenuta, del suo fedel servire finalmente 
degno premio gli dona.” There is hardly even a 
suggestion of justification for Gesualdo’s act; 
“impious assassin” is the politest thing said about 
him. All the sympathies are for Mars and Venus, 
none for the outraged Vulcan. 

There is, however, one poem worth reproducing 
here, not for its poetic merits, which are slight, but 
because it sheds a certain light on Gesualdo’s 
character. This is a sonnet by one Scipione Teodoro : 


Tosto che l’armi e l’omicida ha scorto 
Del consorte crudel che occide e fiede 
La bella donna, che l’amante vede 
Dest’in un punto, et assalito, e morio; 
—Ahi, crudo—disse—tu spregiasti a torto 
Le mie bellezze, e chi con ferma fede 
Amolle, uccidi, ond’ or poca mercede 
Viver me fia, se la mia vita hai morto. 
Qui tace e mort’attende; odio e dispetto 
Vincon pieta; se rende ella al furore 
Del ferro e del morir mostra diletto. 

Sol con la bella man ricopre il core, 
Quasi spregi la vita e pregi il petto, 


Ove col caro amante alberga amore.’ 


1 “ abounding in kindness, courtesy, and humanity is the young woman 
who, moved by the soft entreaties of her lover and taking pity upon his 
torments, finally bestows upon him the worthy recompense of his devotion.”’ 

2 As soon as the fair lady did perceive the murderous arms of the 
cruel spouse who smites and slays, and her lover assailed and dead, she 
spoke as follows :—‘ Ah, cruel one, you did wrongfully despise my charms, 
and now you have killed him who with firm faith cherished me; whence 


D2 


40 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


—the suggestion being that Gesualdo, after a few 
years of married life had ceased to care for his wife, 
and had neglected her. And this may very well be 
true, in view of what we already know of his tempera- 
ment and inclinations. What then could be more 
natural than that the young and. beautiful Donna 
Maria should turn to someone who was better able to 
appreciate her charms? 

The Duke of Andria’s infatuation for her can 
equally well be explained. His wife, we are told, 
was excessively religious, and “ porto troppo nelle 
feste lausterita della vita devota.’”’ When she retired 
to a nunnery after her husband’s death she had to be 
given a cell apart from the rest, because “ aveva 
l’anima cosi infiammata, che gliene ridondava l’ardore 
anche nel corpo—e le grida e 1 sospiri che dava fuori 
eran si gagliardi, da turbar la quiete e 1] sonno delle 
altre.”” Little wonder then, if the Duke should prefer 
to sleep elsewhere than in the marital couch. 

But we have not yet reached the end of this 
unhappy story. It is recorded that, on his arrival at 
Gesualdo, the Prince’s fury and resentment had not 
yet wholly spent themselves. It seems that, in 
addition to the son Emmanuele, who had been left 
behind in Naples, Donna Maria had presented him 
with another child, who was then only a few months 
old. Believing that he recognised in its features a 


life is now of little consequence to me, seeing that my life is dead.’ With 
this she is silent ; hatred and scorn overcome pity: she yields to the fury of 
the steel and shows delight in death. Only with her fair hand she shields 
her heart, as though she scorned her life and prized the breast that har- 
boured love and her dear loved one.’’ 

* “her soul was in such an inflamed condition, that her ardour 
communicated itself to her body, and the shouts and sighs which she gave 
forth were of such vivacity as to disturb the peace and slumber of all the 
others. 


PLATE IV 





PICTURE IN CONVENTO DEI CAPPUCCINI AT GESUALDO 


[ face 








LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 4 


resemblance to the Duke of Andria, he had the cradle, 
and within it the unfortunate child, suspended by 
means of silk ropes attached to the four corners of 
the ceiling in the large hall of his castle. He then 
commanded the cradle to be subjected to “ violent 
undulatory movements,” until the infant, unable to 
draw breath, “ rendered up its innocent soul to God.” 

This ferocious act seems to have appeased the 
Prince’s wrath. In later years, overcome by remorse 
for his triple crime, he caused a monastery to be built 
at Gesualdo in expiation of it. This monastery, the 
Convento dei Cappuccini, still exists, and in the 
church attached to it there hangs a painting of sur- 
passing interest to us, seeing that it contains a portrait 
of the Prince, which is here reproduced for the first 
time. 

At the top and in the centre of the picture the 
Redeemer is sitting in judgment, His right hand up- 
raised in the act of pardoning the guilty and contrite 
Prince who is kneeling humbly in the lower left-hand 
side of the painting. On his right is sitting the 
Blessed Virgin Mary, who, with her right hand, is 
pointing to the sinner for whom she is interceding. 
On the left hand of the Saviour stands the archangel 
Michael who, with the right hand, is similarly pointing 
to Gesualdo for whom he is imploring pardon. 
Slightly lower down, on the left side of the picture is 
Saint Francis, with both arms and hands outstretched 
in an attitude of supplication for the repentant sinner ; 
and opposite to him is Saint Domenic, likewise 
invoking the Divine Mercy. Below Francis is the 
Magdalene, the vessel of perfume at her side, who 
with her face turned towards Gesualdo, seems to be 


42 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


exhorting him to trust in the Divine mercy of Our 
Lord whom she indicates to Don Carlo with both 
hands. Similarly, opposite to her is Saint Catherine 
of Siena, looking up towards the Redeemer and pointing 
out to him the suppliant sinner. Finally, in the lower 
section of the painting is the Prince himself, dressed 
in the Spanish fashion, kneeling bareheaded, while 
Saint Carlo Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan—his 
maternal uncle, by the way—attired in his Cardinal’s 
robes, places his right arm protectingly on his erring 
nephew‘s shoulder, with his face turned towards the 
Divine Redeemer in the act of presenting him. 
Opposite, on the right, kneels a Franciscan nun with 
her hands raised in a gesture of supplication, whose 
identity is somewhat uncertain, though she is 
undoubtedly intended to represent some member of 
the family. Catone, in his A7emorie Gesualdine, 
believes it to be Donna Eleonora d’Este, the Prince’s 
second wife (whom he erroneously considers to be his 
first wife); but it is more probably Isabella, sister of 
Carlo Borromeo, who became a nun with the name of 
Sister Corona, thus explaining the crown which she 
wears upon her head. In the middle of the picture ts 
a beautiful bambino, representing the murdered child, 
with two angels at his side, while below, unfortunately 
hidden from sight by the altar, are two souls burning 
in eternal flames, which are, needless to say, intended 
to represent Donna Maria and the Duke of Andria. 
It must be admitted that the portrait of the Prince 
contained in this picture makes a curiously disagree- 
able impression on one. It is not necessary to know 
anything of his life to detect in these long, narrow, 
slanting eyes with their delicate but strongly marked 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 43 


eyebrows, in the small, puckered, and sensual mouth, 
aquiline nose, and slightly receding forehead and 
chin, a character of the utmost perversity, cruelty and 
vindictiveness. At the same time it is a weak rather 
than a strong face—almost feminine, in fact. 
Physically he is the very type of the degenerate 
descendant of a long aristocratic line. 

It is not known how long Carlo remained at 
Gesualdo, but in 1591 his father died, and he conse- 
quently became Prince of Venosa. Some reconcilia- 
tion with the relatives of the murdered couple must, 
however, have been effected, for Tasso wrote to him at 
Naples a letter dated 19th April, 1592. From this 
time onwards, Gesualdo’s life is essentially one of 
intense pre-occupation with music. True, he married 
again, as I have said, Donna Eleonora d’ Este, in 1594, 
but this was done probably more for dynastic con- 
siderations than from inclination—like his first 


marriage, in fact. She seems to have been a very 
virtuous lady, however, for there is no record of his 
having killed her. She survived him many years, 


and it is just possible that she murdered him. 
However that may be, we next hear of Gesualdo at 
the Court of the Estes, his second wife’s family, at 
Ferrara, in 1594. At that time Ferrara was the most 
cultured, enlightened, and splendid city in the whole 
of Italy. Indeed, one might say that Ferrara 
dominated the closing period of the Renaissance in 
Italy, as Florence dominated its early stages; the 
Medici were the wet-nurses, the Estensi were the 
undertakers. With Ferrara are associated the last 
great writers of the Renaissance—-Ariosto, Tasso, 
Guarini, and others of less importance individually, 


44. CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


but nevertheless forming a brilliant constellation, such 
as Alberto Tollio, Cinthio, Patricio, Salviati, and 
Pigna. 

Life at the court of the last Duke, Alfonso II, was 
as near an approach to paradise as is permitted to mere 
mortals. Describing it, Annibale Romei says in the 
Discorsi: “ It was more like a royal court than that of 
a grand duke; for not only was it full of noble lords 
and valorous cavaliers, but it was also a meeting-place 
of the most learned and cultured spirits, and of men 
pre-eminent in every calling. This Prince 
(Alfonso II), truly admirable in all his acts, so skil- 
fully blended business with pleasure, and so carefully 
apportioned both, that he did not allow himself to be 
wearied either by too many serious occupations or by 
too great a surfeit of diversions. | Consequently his 
Grace has arranged all things in their proper season, 
such as, at the time of Carnival, masks, joustings, 
feasts, comedies, concerts, and other similar 
recreations, which are enjoyed in such peace and 
harmony that it is indeed a joy and a marvel to observe 
on such occasions the happiness of our city.” 

And so the pleasure-loving and perhaps slightly 
effeminate Ferrarese, in such striking contrast to the 
energetic and virile Florentines, were content to 
remain aloof from the ceaseless turmoil and intrigue 
of contemporary politics, and to pass the last fleeting 
and irretrievable moments of the Renaissance in the 
splendid gardens of the Belvidere, with its groves ot 
cypresses and plane-trees, its cool grottoes, rose 
gardens, and marble pavilions with their frescoed 
walls, among the orange and olive trees and vineyards, 
the air heavy with the mingled fragrance of jasmine 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 45 


and orange-blossom : or by the side of artificial lakes 
whose fish had learnt to glide close to the surface of 
the water at the sound of a small silver bell, listening 
for hours on end to the stately and harmonious dis- 
course of scholars, philosophers, and poets, and to the 
endless discussions so dear to the Renaissance mind, 
concerning beauty, truth, virtue, nobility, and so forth; 
and in the summer heats they would retire into 
ville g giatura at Comacchio or in the forests of Mesola 
where the Duke, like the fabulous Kubla Khan, had 
built a vast palace surrounded by twelve miles of 
walls enclosing numerous hunting lodges, deer parks, 
and marble pavilions. There they would spend the 
long days in hunting the wild boar, or in the chase 
with falcons or with hounds, and in every form of 
amusement which human ingenuity could devise, or 
the heart of man desire. | 

But more especially was Ferrara a city of music, 
the art which above all others had always been 
assiduously cultivated there, and in the exercise of 
which Ferrara had always excelled all the other cities 
of Italy. In the palace of the Grand Duke, accord- 
ing to the testimony of Ercole Bottringari, there were 
concerts several times every day, sometimes performed 
by as many as 57 singers—an unprecedented number 
in those days. Instruments were kept constantly in 
tune by musicians specially maintained for the 
purpose, so that they could be taken up and played at 
a moment’s notice. Instruments were made there, 
and the musical library was reputed to be the most 
extensive in the world, both in printed books and in 
manuscripts. And just as the Medici were themselves 
poets and scholars, so the princes of the Casa d’Este 


46 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


did not merely content themselves with favouring, 
protecting, and maintaining musicians at their own 
expense, but also practised the art themselves. From 
records of the times we learn that they were in the 
habit of procuring the most eminent professors of 
music available for the instruction of their children; 
even the pages and gentlemen-in-waiting received 
musical instruction, and it was rare indeed to find a 
gentleman at their court who was not at the same 
time a cultured musician. 

This musical education and culture was by no 
means confined to the male sex. “ Ravissime furon le 
donne che non cantassero suonassero,’ and Lucrezia 
d’Este, afterwards Duchess of Urbino, was a veritable 
melomaniac. Even the nunneries were musical 
centres; in addition to their devotional duties, all the 
nuns cultivated music assiduously and frequently gave 
musical soirées which were often attended by the whole 
court. Some of them even composed. .One, Olimpia 
Leoni, was celebrated for her exquisite contralto voice 
and her viol playing; another, Raffaella Aleotti, for 
her extemporisations upon the organ and her com- 
positions, many of which were published. Even 
Benvenuto Cellini, who cordially detested music, 
could not refrain from praising the music and 
musicians of Ferrara. 

Moreover, all the most eminent composers of the 
day, and of earlier days, were connected, directly or 
indirectly, with Ferrara. Brumel was maestro di 
cappella there; so was the great Josquin Després, who 
wrote there one of his most celebrated works, called 
after Duke Ercole II the JA/issa Hercules Dux 
Ferrariae; so likewise were Vicentino, Cipriano de 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 47 


Rore, Luzzasco Luzzasch1, and the brothers Alfonso 
and Francesco della Viola, all of whom spent the 
greater part of their active careers at Ferrara. 
Willaert, the maestro of San Marco in Venice, had 
close relations with the Estensi, to whom he presented 
many of his compositions. Orlando di Lasso visited 
Ferrara twice, in 1567 and in 1585; Luca Marenzio 
was maestro di cappella to the Cardinal Ippolito 
d’Este; so likewise was Palestrina himself, who also 
passed several years at Ferrara, and John Dowland 
visited the court some time between 1585 and 1595. 
It is, moreover, a highly significant fact that the 
poets who, more than any others, were associated with 
the great vogue and popularity of the madrigal (the 
form most cultivated by musicians of the time apart 
from church music}—namely, Tasso and Guarini— 
were all their lives intimately connected with the court 
of Ferrara. Another and even more important 
association concerns the introduction of solo singing, 
an innovation ascribed in all musical histories to 
Vincenzo Galilei, who made a setting of the Ugolino 
scene from Dante’s /zferno with accompaniment of a 
viol about 1585, though there is evidence to show 
that the experiment was made, at least ten years 
earlier, at Ferrara, by one Vincenzo Guustiniani. 
When we also take into account the fact that the 
school of Ferrara was the one most closely identified 
with daring harmonic experiments, it will readily be 
seen that when the history of music comes to be re- 


* Luzzaschi was a pupil of Cipriano da Rore and the master of 
Frescobaldi. He knew Gesualdo and dedicated his fifth bool of madrigals 
to him (1594). For particulars of Luzzaschi's remarkable madrigals for « 
solo voice with instrumental accompaniment, sce O. Kinkeldey, San iuelb. 
d. int. Musik-Gesell. IX. 


48 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


written—and the sooner it is the better—it will be 
found that the Ferrarese played an infinitely greater 
part in the idiomatic evolution of modern music than 
the little group of literary dilettanti and musical 
amateurs who frequented the house of Count Bardi in 
Florence, in the last years of the sixteenth century. 
In any case, the works of Peri and Caccini are devoid 
of any intrinsic musical interest, and are only 
historically important, which cannot be said of those 
of the madrigalists at the court of Ferrara. 

It was accordingly to this musicians’ paradise that 
the Prince of Venosa bent his steps. The date of his 
advent there is uncertain; we know only that he must 
have found the life and atmosphere highly congenial, 
for he rented the spacious palace of Marco Pio, in 
the Strada degli Angeli, and settled down there. He 
intervened with the Duke on behalf of his friend and 
protegé Tasso, who, though he had formerly disgraced 
himself by his insane exploits and behaviour at the 
court, desired to be forgiven and received back once 
more. The request, however, was not acceded to; in 
any case it would probably have been too late, for 
the unhappy poet died in 1595. Duke Alfonso II 
died two years later without leaving any heirs, and the 
city passed into the hands of the Popes. With him 
died the Italian Renaissance; the sunset or after-glow 
which had shed such a dazzling radiance died out, 
giving place to the all-pervading twilight of the 
Catholic Revival, or Counter-Reformation. All the 
former glory of the city departed, never to return; 
the palaces were deserted and gradually crumbled 
away into ruins, and the Belvidere gardens became a 
desolate wilderness—the “deserta bellezza di Ferrara” 


PLATE V 





COURTYARD OF THE CASTLE AT GESUALDO 


[ face p. 48 





be 





LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 49 


of which a later poet, Gabriele d’Annunzio, sings. 
All the courtiers departed. Only Marfisa d’Este 
remained, the lovely maenad of whom Tasso had 
sung when she led the revels with flushed cheeks and 
unbound golden hair, now grown old and grey, her 
thoughts occupied only with religion. 

Gesualdo probably lingered on for some years after 
the death of the Duke; he seems then to have returned 
to Naples or to Gesualdo. His closing years seem to 
have been unhappy, 1f we are to trust the evidence of a 
chronicle entitled Rovine di Case Napolitane del suo 
tempo, by one Don Ferrante della Marra (Duca della 
Guardia nell’ anno 1632). 

“ The Prince Don Carlo Gesualdo lived to see his 
crimes punished by God through the infliction of four 
great misfortunes, resulting in the total extermination 
of his house and race. 

“The first of these was that he did suffer great 
shame for the space of two years, owing to the conduct 
of Donna Maria d’Avalos, his wife, in lying with Don 
Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria, almost every 
night, practically within sight of her husband. 

“ Having slain Donna Maria, by whom he had a 
son Don Emmanuele, Don Carlo became frenzied 
(st pose Don Carlo a freneticare) and began to treat 
his vassals not only avariciously and lasciviously, but 
- also tyrannically; and owing to this, the anger of God 
being aroused against him, he lost a beautiful male 
child whom he had by Donna Eleonora d’ Este, sister 
of the Duke of Modena, who was his first wife (the 
usual error—Donna Eleonora was his second wife), 
and this was his second great affliction. 

“The third misfortune was that through the 


50 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


agency of God, he was assailed and afflicted by a vast 
horde of demons which gave him no peace for many 
days on end unless ten or twelve young men, whom 
he kept specially for the purpose, were to beat him 
violently three times a day, during which operation he 
was wont to smile joyfully. And in this state did he 
die miserably at Gesualdo, but not until he had lived 
to witness, for his fourth affliction, the death of his 
only son Don Emmanuele, who hated his father and 
had longed for his death, and, what was worse, this 
son died without leaving any children save only two 
daughters whom he had by Donna Polisena of 
Fustemberg (Furstenburg ?), a German princess. 


“And although he had arranged that the elder of 
these should marry within the family, his house suffered 
two more misfortunes. Firstly, against his express 
dispositions the young Princess of Venosa was 
married, by order of the King, to Prince Nicolino 
Ludovisio, nephew of the Pope, Gregory XV; and at 
this day she doth live at Bologna, having caused the 
loss to her family of the principality of Venosa, and 
also the state of Gesualdo which had been in the 
family for little less than six hundred years. 

‘““ The second of these two other misfortunes—and 
to my thinking, greater than all the others—was that 
after the death of Don Emmanuele, the Princess 
Polisena went to live with her aunt, the second wife of 
the Prince of Caserta, Andrea Matteo Acquaviva; 
and having lived thus for many years did acquire 
an evil reputation, for not only was she all this time 


* Concerning Don Emmanuele, we are told that he was a poet and 
greatly interested in astrology (Borzelli—Maria d’Avalos, p. 96.) 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 51 


concubine to the said Prince, but had secretly had 
several children by him. 

“Thus did it please God to destroy, both in 
possessions and in honour, a princely house which was 
descended from the ancient Norman kings.” 

This is indeed a gloomy picture, and in spite of its 
undoubted exaggerations, conveys nevertheless a 
strong impression of authenticity. I have taken 
the trouble to verify the facts concerning the extinction 
of the House of Gesualdo, and have found the 
narrative strictly accurate in its details. Even the 
_more fantastic statements, such as that concerning the 
horde of demons, receive striking and unexpected 
confirmation from a reterence to Gesualdo which is to 
be found in a work of Thomas Campanella “ A/edici- 
nalium juxta propria principia” (lib. III, art. 12). The 
writer, in attributing to flagellation the virtue of curing 
intestinal obstructions, adduces in proof of his assertion 
the case of Gesualdo: “ Princeps Venusiae musica 
clarissimus nostro tempore cacare non poterat, nisi 
verberatus a servo ad id adscito.’”’ 

In other words, what Ferrante della Marra calls 
demons, we to-day would call auto-intoxication; it is 
simply a matter of terminology. And, after all, does 
not modern medical science regard this unfortunate 
complaint with as much fear and superstition as our 
predecessors regarded demons? Is it not, in fact, 
believed to be the source of all the ills to which mortal 
flesh is subject—the Evil One himself? 

Dr. Ferdinand Keiner, in his excellent little 

1 “ The Prince of Venosa, one of the best musicians of his age, was 
unable to go to the stool, without having been previously flogged by a valet 


kept expressly for the purpose.”” Thomas Campanellz, Medicinalium 
juxta propria, Libri tertii, cap. III., Art. XII.: ‘‘ Monstrosa cura.’’) 


E 


52, CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


brochure Die Madrigale Gesualdos von Venosa, 
suggests that the prevailing melancholy of Gesualdo’s 
music might be attributed to the tragic circumstances 
of his married life. It seems, however, much more 
likely that it was caused by the distressing and almost 
universal complaint from which he suffered. Burton, 
in his great work, the “ Anxatomy of Melancholy ” 
Part 1, Sect. 2, Memb. 2, Subs. 4) declares “ that 
costiveness and keeping in of our ordinary excrements 
is a cause of many diseases, and of melancholy in 
particular,” and supports his assertion with many con- 
crete examples and expert medical opinions. 


Carlo Gesualdo seems to have died in 1613 (not 
1614 as Keiner and others say), for there is in existence 
a will made by him, dated 3rd September, 1613, and 
opened by his wife, Donna Eleonora, on the 29th of 
the same month and year. Unfortunately I have not 
been able to obtain a copy of this interesting docu- 
ment. Modestino, in his book Della Dimora di 
Torquato Tasso in Napoli (Naples, 1863), quotes 
from it, saying that he made a copy from the original 
in the State Archives, which so far I have been unable 
to trace. 

In it, Modestino tells us, the Prince invokes the 
intercession on his behalf of the saints represented in 
the picture here reproduced. He left 40,000 ducats 
yearly to his widow for as long as she remained 
unmarried and continued to reside within the kingdom 
of Naples. If she did not wish to live in Gesualdo, 
she was given the choice of the castle at Taurasi or 
the palace at Naples on the shore between Mergellina 
and Posilippo. We learn also that he had a natural 


LIFE OF CARLO GESUALDO 53 


son, Don Antonio Gesualdo, to whom he left 50 
ducats monthly for the duration of his life. 

This will contradicts the statement of another 
writer, Litta, in his Famiglie Celebri a’/talia, where 
we are told that Donna Eleonora did not live long in 
harmony with the Prince, her husband. Complaining 
principally of his extreme prodigality, she petitioned 
the Pope for a divorce and obtained it, after which she 
retired to Modena, and she entered the convent of 
Santa Eufemia, where she died in 1637. This is 
obviously wrong, however. 

Gesualdo was buried in the chapel of Saint 
Ignatius in the church of the Gesu Nuovo at Naples. 
The inscription on his tomb was as follows :— 


CAROLUS GESUALDUS 
COMPSAE COMES, VENUSIAE PRINCEPS, 
SANCTI CAROLI BORROMEI SORORE GENITUS, 
CELESTI CLARIOR COGNATIONE 
QUAM REGIUM SANGUINE NORTMANNORUM 
SEPULCRALI DUO HAC ARA SIBI SUISQUE ERECTA 
COGNATOS CINERES, CINERI FOVET SUO, 
DONEC UNA SECUM ANIMENTUR AD VITAM, 
SOCIETAS IESU SIBI SUPERSTET, AC POSTERA 
INTEGRE PIETATIS 
OCULATA SEMPER TESTIS MEMOR. 
P. 


Nothing of the tomb remains. After the earth- 
quake of 1688 the Gest. Nuovo was rebuilt and in the 
process the sepulchre of Gesualdo disappeared. 

And this is all we know concerning the life of that 
most singular and delectable gentleman, His most 


54 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


Illustrious and Serene Highness Don Carlo, third 
Prince of Venosa, eighth Count of Consa, fifteenth 
Lord of Gesualdo, Marquis of Laino, Rotondo, and 
S. Stefano, Duke of Caggiano, Lord of Frigento, 
Acquaputida, Paterno, S. Manco, Boneto, Luceria, 
S. Lupolo, etc. | 

Pray for his soul. 


APPENDIX I 


LETTERS FROM TORQUATO TASSO TO DON 
CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


(1) APRIL IQTH, 1592. 

Once again I[ entertain the hope that your 
Excellency will be coming to Rome before Christmas. 

. I send you herewith ten madrigals following the 
others, begging you to excuse their poverty of 
invention, occasioned by natural infirmity and unfor- 
tunate circumstances; in spite of which, with the 
utmost difficulty, and solely in order to please your 
Excellency, I have forced myself to adopt new 
forms, as behoves the poet, who—according to 
Aristotle—must either be divine, or of a pliant and 
versatile disposition. I kiss your Excellency’s hand. 


(II) Aprit, 1592. 

I have taken this fresh feats eS of writing to 
your Excellency this very same week concerning the 
lack of finish in one of the madrigals which I had sent 
you, of which I now send you again a new version, 
together with a few others, beseeching you to tolerate 
my negligence or inadvertence as others have tolerated 
them in former days less adverse to me. Of your 
coming I should at least like to be certain, since I am 
in ignorance of all your other plans. To the Cardinal 
Gesualdo I desire to be warmly recommended by your 
Excellency. 


(III) DercEMBER IOTH, 1592. 
The replies of your Excellency, like your favours, 


can never come too late, so greatly do they resemble 
5S E2 


56 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


all divine things which demand time for their fulfil- 
ment; but if your silence is to be construed as a sign 
of your pending advent to Rome, I can the more 
readily console my disappointment with it, and with 
the hopes of your favours. I send you herewith 
another ten madrigals, and I would have sent you an 
even greater number, but having lost them like money, 
and perhaps in much the same way, I am compelled to 
re-write them. Nevertheless there ought to be alto- 
gether up to the present time about forty; and if I 
write to you thus it is because I would not have myself 
seem excessively idle to your Excellency, and because 
I would wish you the sooner to recognise my poverty 
of invention. I am reading Neapolitan history at 
present, but I long for greater novelty and times either 
more remote or more recent. I have sometimes 
wished that I could do similar things myself, but as it 
happens, I am not considered worthy of the task, 
whereat I greatly grieve; because in the leisure of the 
Vatican, if I could have arrived there through the good 
graces of His Holiness, I should not have been 
obliged to undertake other tasks. I have had the 
desire to call around me the amorous muses, and have 
not yet repented of the desire. But I do beseech your 
Excellency to pardon me if I am not able to dwell 
with them any longer for the present, though perhaps 
I shall be permitted to call them to me again. I kiss 
your hand. 

P.S.—If it would not displease your Excellency 
to have the madrigals re-copied, the following two 
lines of the last could be re-written thus : 


In erto colle, in una valle o’n selva 
Non s’ode augello o belva. 


APPENDIX I! 57 
(IV) Rome, DecEMBER, 1592. 


Repeated experience has made me ashamed of 
myself and of my feeble invention, so reluctant to 
recover itself, and so poor in the reproduction of the 
innumerable aspects of beauty; therefore I beseech 
your Excellency not to desire further demonstrations 
of my culpability. It contents me well that you do 
not deceive yourself with false notions concerning 
my ignorance and insufficiency; be only certain of the 
affection I bear you, and of the desire I entertain for 
your favours. . . . Your Excellency cannot doubt 
that I love you and honour you as much as is permitted 
by your high station in life and my lowly one; although 
I may not be able to satisfy you in the composition of 
the five madrigals which I herewith send to you. The 
first, which are of exactly the character and style which 
you desire, possess no rare qualities. In the others I 
am myself inclined to censure the hidden erudition. I 
do not deceive myself in so slight a matter of art, 
though possibly it is suitable to the character of the 
poems. 

We are now at the Christmas festivities, and I, with 
my usual infirmity, suffer terribly from the cold in this 
city, and pray God to console me through the grace of 
His Holiness and of all these illustrious gentlemen; 
and more particularly through the benevolence of the 
Cardinal Gesualdo and your Excellency, of whose 
goodness and nobility I do not wish to despair.” 


(V) June, 1594. 


| Since I rejoiced with your Excellency on the 
- occasion of your marriage, and with a few stanzas 


58 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


demonstrated to the best of my ability my devotion 
and respects, I have come to Naples with the intention 
of purging myself, and have already commenced the 
treatment. May it please God that it will benefit me 
sufficiently to enable me to survive until the return of 
your Excellency. In the meanwhile, if you are in any 
way able to help me or do me any favour, know that it 
is well merited on account of my great affection and 
esteem. In expectation of your gracious favours and 
those of your uncle, the Cardinal, I kiss your hand. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


(The followin g list does not represent all the books 
consulted in writing the foregoing life of Gesualdo, 
but only a few of the more important). 


Aldimari, Biagio. Historia genealogica della Famiglia Carafa, 


1691. 
Ammirato, S. Delle Famiglie nobili Napoletane, 1651. 
Arienzo, Niccolo d’. Un Predecessore di Alessandro 


Scarlatti, 1892. 

Borzelli, Angelo. Maria d’Avalos, 1914. 

Brantome, Pierre Bourdeille de. Vies des Dames galantes, 
1822. 

Capasso, B. Torquato Tasso a Napoli, 1895. 

Catone, Giacomo. Memorie Gesualdine, 1840. 

Cerreto, Scipione. Della  prattica musica vocale e 
strumentale, 1601. 

Crollalanza, G. Dizionario storico-blasonico, 1886. 

Florimo, Francesco. La Scuola musicale di Napoli, 1880. 

France, Anatole. Le puits de Sainte Claire (Histoire de 
Donia Maria d’ Avalos). 

Frizzi, A. Memorie per la storia di Ferrara, 1847-50. 

Giacomo, Salvatore di. Celebrita Napoletane, 1896. 

Guerra, Scipione. Diurnali, 1891. 

Keiner, Ferdinand. Die Madrigale Gesualdos von Venosa, 
IQI4. 

Lellis, Carlo di. Discorsi delle Famiglie nobili del Regno di 
Napoli, 1674-71. 

Litta, Pompeo. Celebre Famiglie Italiane, 1819, etc. 

Masucci, Antonio. I] Teatro dell’ Amicizia, 1661. 

Maurel, André. Quinze jours 4 Naples, 1921. 

Modestino, Carlo. Della dimora di Torquato Tasso in 
Napoli, 1863. 

Mutinelli, Fabio. Storia arcana e aneddotica d'Italia, 1856. 

Napoli Nobilissima, edited by S. di Giacomo, 1892, etc. 

Pietri, Francesco di. Historia Napoletana, 1634. 

Ricca, E. La Nobilta delle due Sicile, 1859. 

a9 


60 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


Serassi, P. A. Vita di Torquato Tasso, 1858. 

Sitwell, Sacheverell. Southern Baroque Art, 1923. 

Solerti, Angelo. Vita di Torquato Tasso, 1895. 

—________——— Ferrara e la Corta estense, 1891. 

Summonte, Historia della citta e regno di Napoli, 1602. 

Tasso, Torquato. Lettere (edited by C. Guasti), 1852-5. 

Valdrighi, F. Cappelle, Concerte, e Musiche di Casa d’Este, 
188 


Valle, Pietro della. Della musica dell’ eta nostra, 1635. 
Villa Rosa, Marchese di. Memorie dei compositori del regno 
di Napoli, 1840. 


ICONOGRAPHY 


I.—Painting in the Convento dei Cappuccini at Gesualdo. 
II.—A marble bust mentioned and described by Catone in 
his Memorie Gesualdine, and formerly belonging to him. 
‘On the head is to be observed a circlet representing the 
small crown proper to the rank of a Count, adorned with 
small embossments denoting precious stones. Below this the 
hair is divided into two tresses on either side which are 
drawn symmetrically together behind the head, meeting below 
the shoulders. The neck is adorned with a necklace from 
which a small cross hangs.’’ But neither the bust nor its 
present owner can be traced. 
Thirdly, for the sake of ccmpleteness, may be mentioned 
a portrait in the Conservatorio di S. Pietro a Majella, said to 
be that of the Prince ; but Sig. Salvatore di Giacomo, who has 
seen it, assures me that it is not genuine, and bears no 
resemblance to the indubitably authentic portrait in the picture 
at Gesualdo. 7 
oie Fe 


PART II 


Carlo Gesualdo considered as a Murderer 





PART Uf 


and 


Carlo Gesualdo considered as a Murderer 


Before embarking upon a critical disquisition 
concerning the merits and faults of Don Carlo’s 
achievement as a murderer, it will first of all be 
necessary to lay down a few general principles and 
standards of taste and judgment; and as it was the 
first pre-occupation of our distinguished predecessor 
in this particular field of wsthetics, namely, Thomas 
de Quincey, emphatically to dissociate the art of 
murder from all moral implications, so it must like- 
wise be ours. It is true, of course, that a murder 
can, and perhaps should, be considered from a moral 
standpoint, and from the point of view of society, like 
any other art; but that is rather the business of the 
philosophers and moralists, not of estheticians. 
Plato, and many other thinkers after him, have con- 
cluded that all art is immoral, and all artists a menace 
to the safety and well-being of the state. He may 
very well be right; but the fact remains that the work 
of art exists, and it is the business of the esthetic 
critic to consider it scientifically and objectively as a 
pure phenomenon. We cannot do better than quote 
here a passage from De Quincey’s great masterpiece, 
“On Murder, Considered as one of the Fine Arts,” 


in illustration of this important point. 
63 


64 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


“When a murder is in the paulo-post-futurum 
tense—not done, not even (according to modern 
purism) beizg done, but only going to be done—and 
a rumour of it comes to our ears, by all means let us 
treat it morally. But suppose it over and done, and 
that you can say of it, TeredXeora: : It is finished, or 
(in that adamantine molossus of Medea) eipyacra: 
Done it is: it is a fait accompli; suppose the poor 
murdered man to be out of his pain, and the rascal 
that did it off like a shot, nobody knows whither; 
suppose, lastly, that we have done our best, by put- 
ting out our legs, to trip up the fellow in his flight, 
but all to no purpose—‘ abiit, evasit, excessit, erupit,’ 
etc.—why, then I say, what’s the use of any more 
virtue? Enough has been given to morality; now 
comes the turn of Taste and the Fine Arts. A sad 
thing it was, no doubt, very sad; but we can’t mend 
it. Therefore let us make the best of a bad matter; 
and, as it is impossible to hammer anything out of it 
for moral purposes, let us treat it zesthetically, and 
see if it will turn to account in that way. . . We 
dry up our tears, and have the satisfaction, perhaps, 
to discover that a transaction, which, morally con- 
sidered, was shocking, and without a leg to stand on, 
when tried by the principles of Taste, turns out to be 
a very meritorious performance.” 

The logic and general rightness of this reasoning 
can hardly be disputed by even the most fanatical 
moralist, and we are consequently at liberty to pursue 
our esthetic investigations without any qualms of 
conscience. 

But, it may be objected here, what pretensions has 
murder to be considered an art at all? This ques- 


aopf ] 


ATLSVO HLIA OG TVNSAD AO AMAIA 





IA SEV Id 





GESUALDO AS A MURDERER 65 


tion must be answered at the outset. It is true that 
it is not a creative art, as the other arts are; it is in 
fact, a destructive, perhaps, indeed, the only destructive 
art. One hears a great deal about “ the art of war,” 
but this is only a manner of speaking, for the more 
it tends to become an art, as it was at the time of the 
Italian Renaissance, or in China, the more it tends 
to eliminate bloodshed. It was considered permissible 
to knock your opponent off his horse and take him 
prisoner, but bad form and unprofessional conduct to 
kill him, unless by an unavoidable accident. It is 
possible even to-day to execute a masterpiece of war- 
like art without the loss of a man on either side. But 
it is manifestly impossible to commit a murder with- 
out bloodshed. The essential feature of a murder 
lies in destruction; in war it is only incidental. 

Yet if this were all that there was to it, murder 
could not possibly claim to be an art. But it cannot 
sufficiently be emphasised that, to quote again the 
admirable words of De Quincey, “ Something more 
goes to the composition of a fine murder than two 
blockheads to kill and be killed-—a knife—a purse— 
and a dark lane. Design, gentlemen, grouping, 
light and shade, poetry, sentiment, are now deemed 
indispensable to attempts of this nature.” In other 
words, blood may be a necessary condition of the art ; 
it is the medium in which the artist works, like sound, 
colour, line, stone, words : that is all. What finally and 
decisively justifies the claim of murder to be considered 
an art is, as with all the other arts, its emotional 
appeal; its function is, in the Aristotelean phrase, to 
purge the soul by means of pity and terror. What 
else is drama, indeed, tragic drama, except the 


66 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


criticism of murder? And this brings us to an 
interesting point. The criticism of a creative art is 
essentially destructive, the criticism of a destructive 
art is creative. One might even say the dramatist 
bears the same relation to the murderer that the 
executant does to the composer. It may be observed 
that when the dramatist invents an imaginary murder 
on which to base his play, it never has the same 
inevitability or the same appeal. It is like the com- 
position of a pianist or a violinist. One of the reasons 
of the supremacy of the ancient Greek and 
Elizabethan dramatists lies precisely in the fact that 
they did not try to invent murders of their own, but 
founded their plays on actual historical murders. 
Whenever they tried to dispense with this condition, 
like Cyril Tourneur in The Revenger's Tragedy, 
the result, however fine the poetry, is never wholly 
satisfactory. It is a great mistake to suppose that it 
is only the poetry that makes a great tragedy. In the 
same way we are apt to imagine that a great pianist or 
violinist is responsible for the beauty of a work. He 
only realises and adds to the composer’s conception, 
that is all. Similarly the dramatist may reveal a beauty 
or a terror of which we were not aware in the original 
murder, but he does not actually create them in the 
strict sense of the word. Yet there is no doubt that 
the murderer needs the poet or the dramatist to com- 
plete his work, in the same way that the composer 
needs the executant to give life to his conception, 
The composer writes the work down on paper, but it 
does not properly exist without the executant; the 
murderer executes first, but his achievement has to be 
written down and re-created by the poet in order to 


GESUALDO AS A MURDERER 67 


attain immortality. Unless he is fortunate in finding 
a great writer his murder, however faultlessly 
executed, will soon be forgotten. | Where are the 
crimes of yester-year? Their memory lives for a 
week in the newspapers, and then fades away entirely. 

This has been the melancholy fate of the great 
achievement of Gesualdo in the field of murder, as 
well as in the field of music. He has never found, as 
he deserved, a Shelley or a Webster to make a Cenci 
or a Duchess of Malfi out of him; and he is equally 
ignored and neglected by our choirs and choral 
societies. 

_ Incidentally, does not the fact that the murderer 
thus provides the material for great works of art go 
a long way towards providing a moral justification for 
his act? Without him there would be no Macbeth, no 
Hamlet, no Medea, Oedipus, Agamemnon, etc. And 
is it not the essence, perhaps the main motive, in 
committing a murder, to acquire some form of 
immortality not otherwise obtainable? This is cer- 
tainly borne out by the theories of many psychological 
experts, who believe that the desire for notoriety and 
fame at any cost is responsible for at least a 
large proportion of murders. And when one 
remembers, too, that the murderer’s victims also share 
in his immortality, can we not say that he deserves 
their undying gratitude—or rather their dying 
gratitude? 

In fact, “ To hear people talk,” says De Quincey, 
“you would suppose that all the disadvantages and 
inconveniences were on the side of being murdered, 
and that there were none at all in xzot being 
murdered.” 


68 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


Let us, however, dismiss all these moral 
considerations and turn our attention to the work 
itself, applying to it the critical standards laid down 
by De Quincey. In the first place, he says, the person 
murdered ought to be a good man, because otherwise 
he might perhaps himself be contemplating murder at 
the very time. This may seem to us to be over- 
subtle, but a-moment’s reflection will suffice to con- 
vince us of its fundamental justice. For example, a 
duel resulting in the death of one of the combatants 
cannot properly be considered a murder; unpre- 
paredness in the victim is essential, the actual “ good- 
ness”? being immaterial. This condition is amply 
fulfilled in Gesualdo’s case. 

Secondly, says De Quincey, the person selected 
should not be a public character. Everyone will 
agree to that. A political assassination—for that is 
generally all it amounts to—can hardly claim to be 
the highest form of the art. In fact, it is a kind of 
“programme murder.” Charlotte Corday, for 
example, may be technically a murderess, but that is 
all. The moment a murderer feels abstract justifica- 
tion for his act, or that warm, genial, self-righteous 
feeling which so many people experienced in the years 
of the war, then murder simply becomes a semi-legal 
execution in the public interest, or a mere “ taking the 
law into one’s own hands.” 

It must be admitted that this question of motive is 
a most difficult thing to decide. No hard and fast 
rule can be laid down here; each case has to be judged 
on its own merits. De Quincey gives us no help on 
this point. On the whole he clearly tends in the 
direction of purism and preciosity, a kind of 1890 


~ GESUALDO AS A MURDERER 69 


“ murder for murder’s sake,” for the sheer craftsman’s 
joy and the creative, or rather destructive, ecstasy, of 
the proceeding. His friend’s murder of the cataleptic 
baker of Mannheim sufficiently indicates his predi- 
lections. Personally I find this too precious and 
esthetical. On the other hand it must be admitted 
that murder for robbery’s sake, for example, is not 
sufficiently removed from necessity; for it is only 
when an activity is pursued without relation to the 
necessities of actual life that it becomes art. 

On the whole, I think a nice balance is struck in 
Gesualdo’s work between these two’ pernicious 
extremes. He had indeed a certain motive but not 
sufficient to justify murder. I know that many con- 
noisseurs of deservedly weighty reputation would 
class the crime passionel as a lower branch of the art 
‘of murder, a kind of justifiable homicide. This is the 
French school of thought, and their taste is largely 
shared by Latin peoples generally at the present day. 
But it was not always so; contrary to expectations, it 
was not so in Gesualdo’s time.. Indeed, as we have 
seen, sentiment in general was definitely on the side 
of the lovers, and against the avenging and affronted 
Siisband.. - — : 

Another necessary condition of a good murder is 
that the perpetrator should not as a consequence of the 
times in which he lived, or as a result of his eminent 
position, enjoy complete immunity from the conse- 
quences of his action. If the perpetrator runs no risk 
whatever of losing his life, all art is at an end; 
murder ceases to have any significance as soon as one 
is in a position to kill anyone who happens to annoy 
one, with absolute impunity. Again, contrary to 


70 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


expectations, Gesualdo was not in such a position, 
despite his exalted rank, as we have seen from his 
flight and prolonged absence from the scene of his 
exploit. Moreover, one of the Venetian ambassadors 
to Naples about this time, Michele Suriano, con- 
sidered it one of the defects of the viceregal govern- 
ment that affairs of justice were executed without 
making any distinction between nobles and common 
people—a defect because punishment means so little 
to a mere commoner, and so much to a nobleman. 
Whether we agree with this characteristically 
Renaissance point of view or not, it would at any rate 
seem certain that Gesualdo ran as much risk: of 
answering for his action as any common subject. On 
the other hand it must be admitted that the govern- 
ment of Naples in all times has looked with a tolerant 
and kindly eye upon practitioners of the difficult and 
exacting art of murder. Even to-day, I believe, there 
is a higher ratio of murders committed there than in 
any other European city. Naples may have little to 
show for itself in other fields of art, compared with 
other Italian cities such as Florence, Rome, Venice, 
Siena; but none of them can dispute her pre-eminence 
in murder. This tolerance and tacit approval on the 
part of the authorities has had both advantages and 
defects. It certainly permits of a very high level of 
technique and execution which, however, is apt to 
degenerate into facile virtuosity and sterile repetition. 
It is the opposite with us at the present day. Whether 
rightly or wrongly, murder is discouraged and looked 
upon with great disfavour in this country, with the 
inevitable result that, however fine and striking our 
productions may be in conception, the lack of facilities 


apf | 


OGIVASAD LEY ANLISVO AAI 





HA ALVW 1d 





GESUALDO AS A MURDERER 71 


for performance is so great that there is always con- 
siderable weakness and uncertainty in execution. 
These two contrary faults—of sterile virtuosity and 
amateurishness—are equally avoided by Gesualdo. 
Both in conception and in execution his achievement 
is faultless. It might be objected, however, that 
he left most of the work to his servants to execute, and 
that therefore he cannot claim credit for it, but this, I 
think, is a modern prejudice. All the great 
Renaissance artists employed skilled assistants in 
order to carry out their conceptions, and in this 
Gesualdo was only a child of his age. His servants 
were only instruments which he employed for his 
esthetic purposes, as the architect employs bricklayers 
and so forth. 

Another objection that may perhaps be raised to 
his work is that, in De Quincey’s words, it lacks entirely 
“the grand feature of mystery, which in one shape or 
another ought to colour every judicious attempt at 
murder.” Here I take leave to differ from my 
illustrious predecessor. He seems to me to be carried 
away here by personal prejudice and native sym- 
pathies. We northern peoples are inclined to look 
for certain qualities in a work of art to the detriment 
or exclusion of others; we are apt to be prejudiced in 
favour of the romantic element in art. In the southern 
schools one must look for other qualities; the element 
of mystery and romance is not to be found there. 
Gesualdo’s murder is essentially Latin; it is full of 
the light gaiety and vivacious ¢empo of the southern 
school. 

In execution, too, it is quite in the best classic 
tradition. Cold steel he employs as the basis of his 


F2 


72. CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


style, as the classical composers used the strings ; fire- 
arms, which might be likened to the brass, he uses 
sparingly. In fact it is an open question whether we 
moderns have not lost more than we have gained 
through the perfection of firearms, as modern com- 
posers have through the perfection of brass. In these 
days of six-chambered revolvers we are apt to rely too 
exclusively upon this medium, with a resultant mono- 
tony and a too constant richness of style. Any 
incompetent amateur can make quite a fine display 
with a revolver, but he would be quite lost if it were 
taken away from him and a toasting-fork or a tin- 
opener given to him instead. Gesualdo handles the 
firearms with commendable restraint, but with enor- 
mous effect. Not one shot does he waste, as we see 
from the coroner’s inquest. On the other hand, the 
figuration of the steel weapons is exceedingly 
elaborate and complex. Wooden instruments he 
neglects entirely; this is perhaps the only conspicuous 
defect of the work. A few judicious blows with a 
bludgeon impart a variety, expressiveness, and rich 
charm, which cannot be attained in any other way. 
On the whole he perhaps tends to use too many instru- 
ments; his work is a trifle thickly scored here and 
there. . 

But all this is carping criticism. What we can all 
unreservedly admire is the boldness of conception, the 
breadth of style, the absolute sureness of execution. 
There is nothing improvisatory about it; all the effects 
are foreseen and carefully planned. It is in the 
grand manner, and fit to be placed side by side and 
compared with the best examples of the art, which, by 
the way, all date from about this period. The late 


GESUALDO AS A MURDERER 73 


Renaissance is indeed the classical age of murder; at 
no other time does one find such a brilliant constella- 
tion of examples, all of so uniform an excellence. It 
was an age in which the practice of the art was not as 
yet confined to any particular class of society; in other 
words it had not yet become professionalised. Even 
creative artists, philosophers, and scholars, were not 
averse to dabbling occasionally in the destructive art. 
The poet Chiabrera murdered a Roman gentleman in 
revenge for an insult; the historian Davila also com- 
mitted a murder and was himself assassinated; Tasso, 
in his periodic fits of frenzy, was wont to attack people 
with a dagger; Murtola and Marini were in the habit 
- of shooting at each other; and Giuseppe Ortale, a 
Sicilian poet, was known as the “ Cavaliere 
sanguinario ” for his bloodthirsty tendencies. 

But more particularly is there a definite connection 
between music and murder, although it may not be 
readily apparent. Not that many musicians have 
actually committed murders (apart from Gesualdo, one 
can only think of Salieri who, as everyone knows, 
poisoned Mozart); nor, strange to say, have many 
musicians been murdered themselves, except Mozart 
and Stradella. The connection between the two 
activities is much more subtle but none the less close. 
In the first place, the significant fact should be noted 
that the beginning of the decline of murder as an art 
dates from precisely the same period as the develop- 
ment of music as a personal expression, 1e., the 
beginning of the 17th century. In the middle ages 
music was more a craft than an art, because the emo- 
tions which we now express in music were then actually 
expressed in life. In these good old days one com- 


74 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


mitted a murder if one felt lke it, and thought no 
more about the matter; to-day we write an Elektra or 
a Cavalleria Rusticana instead, in order to work off 
our feelings. In definite relation to the increased 
difficulties attendant upon the practice of murder, 
music has become more and more sadistic. In place 
of inflicting the utmost pain on a single individual, 
we outrage the ears of thousands. 

And so we find in the particular case in question. 
It was not until Gesualdo gave up murder that he 
seriously took to composing. His early works are 
comparatively conventional in style because he was 
expressing his emotions in another medium. This 
fact opens up several fascinating speculations; for 
example, may not the badness of Mr. "5s music 
be accounted for by his over-indulgence in murder? 
Cannot the present reaction against emotionalism in 
music be traced to a similar cause, and to the 
catharsis effected by the war? These, however, are 
questions which could only be answered at great 
length, and this is manifestly not the place or occasion 
for such an ambitious attempt. My only purpose 
here is to point out that Gesualdo’s eminence in the 
art of murder is no less than it is in the art of music, 
and that his achievement in both spheres has been 
unduly and undeservedly neglected. 





PART III 


Gesualdo the Musician 





PAR L AY 


Gesualdo the Musician 


I 


Gesualdo, the eminent madrigalist, 

Played the lute well, and was not a bad regalist.' 
At keyboard extemporaries 
He beat all his contemporaries, 

As, later, did also a lad we call Liszt. 


Unlike the Prince Consort of pious memory, 
Gesualdo was something very much more than an 
aristocratic virtuoso who dabbled in musical composi- 
tion. He is not only a figure of paramount importance 
in musical history, but also a composer whose best 
work, when all historical considerations are laid aside, 
still has the power to move us by its intrinsic beauty. 
After three centuries he is seen to hold a proud place 
in the distinguished company of those great men 
whose music was the crowning glory of the 
Renaissance; and although he stands a little aloof 
from the great tradition which gave England! her Byrd 
and Italy her Palestrina, yet, as we shall see in the 
present study, through Luca Marenzio—the sweetness 
of whose songs had earned him the title of “ the swan 
of Italy *»—he joins hands with both. He is by no 
means an isolated person of eccentric genius, but 
rather the fine flower of a school of daringly imagina- 





* Regal: a small portable organ. 
77 


78 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


tive experimental composers. Already, in the middle 
of the sixteenth century, the polyphonic tradition had 
ceased to satisfy some musicians. The old order of 
music was breaking up; composers were becoming 
discontented with the traditional forms and _ the 
arbitrary limitations of the text-books, and were 
eagerly searching in every direction for new methods 
of expression. A great deal of the music of the period 
was merely tentative, the result of practical experi- 
ment, of “objective investigation of aural phenomena’ 
(to quote a modern tag) and as such, of no artistic 
value. But this research work has its use and can 
always be turned to good account by the man who is 
big enough to use it as a means to an end and not 
regard it as an all-sufficient end in itself. Viewing 
music as a whole, the contributions of experimental 
composers may be regarded as sketch-books and notes, 
insignificant in themselves but of the utmost value to 
the man of genius who is able to develop the resources 
which these but suggest, and to make use of them as a 
means of expression. Now Gesualdo was just such 
aman of genius. ‘“ Such a man,” as Ambros says in 
his History of Music, “ seeks and finds new paths 
while the men of mediocre talent go plodding safely 
and comfortably along in the old ruts. Madrigals of 
average merit according to the old rules were com- 
posed by the thousand at this period, and those that 
time has not devoured are not worth looking at, 
whereas Gesualdo arouses our keenest interest and 
sympathy.” | 

hs complete silence of oractiegna all English 
writers on music since Burney and Hawkins on the 
subject of this intensely interesting composer is 


- 


PLATE VIII 


one a ¢ facrar cen quid, ocib : 
_ Liber primus. : 


Nine primum: opera D Ioanni Petri Ca: 
_puccy Capuan in lacem editus. 


NEAP. Apud Coftaninum Vidlé- 


MID C.4Aff. 





FRONTISPIECE OF SACRAE CANTIONES, FIRST BOOK, BY CARLO GESUALDO 


[ face p. 78 





« 
” 
. 
’ 
- ‘ 
‘ 
» 
. 
- 
‘ 
' 
- 
+ 
_ 


uh 





GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 79 


rendered the more inexplicable by the profusion of 
authorities, ancient and modern, who may be consulted 
in other languages. Sir Hubert Parry, in his volume 
on the music of the seventeenth century in the Oxford 
History of Music, does not even mention the name of 
Gesualdo, and Mr. Reginald Lane Poole, in the latest 
edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians 
v. 243) calmly asserts that “ of his history nothing is 
recorded ; we only know that he was living in 1613.” 
The only reference’ to him that I have found in any 
modern English publication occurs in Dr. Ernest 
Walker’s scholarly History of Mlusic in England 
(1907), where, after citing the Prince of Venosa as 
‘“ Monteverdi's friend ” (an ascription for which there 
does not seem to be any authority whatever), Dr. 
Walker remarks that the Madrigal Moro lasso “sounds 
like Wagner gone wrong.” The list of “ The chief 
names in musical history” given in Stanford and 
Forsyth’s History of Music (1916) includes Steibelt, 
Sousa, and Saint-Saéns, but there is no mention of 
Gesualdo, although Mr. Forsyth claims that his list 
contains all the most important writers of and on 
music. 

The fact is that the important developments in the 
direction of dramatic music which took place at the 
beginning of the seventeenth century have somewhat 
overshadowed the intrinsically musical developments. 
Historians and other folk whose zeal for classification 
exceeds their first-hand knowledge of music are accus- 
tomed to regard the end of the sixteenth century as the 








* Since these lines were written there has appeared Mr. Ernest 
Newman’s Musical Critic’s Holiday in which several pages are devoted to a 
consideration of Gesualdo’s work and its appreciation by his contemporaries. 


80 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


sunset of the polyphonic period, the early years of the 
seventeenth as the dawn of the harmonic—and to draw 
a rigid line between the two periods. They make 
much of the fact that Caccini called his book of songs 
for a solo voice The New Music—as though minstrels 
and troubadours had not been singing songs to an 
instrumental accompaniment for centuries before— 
and base Monteverdi’s chief claim to remembrance 
upon his operatic experiments. A new form such as 
opera—which was in the beginning imposed upon 
music from without, not conditioned by an impulse 
of purely musical expression—arrests the historian’s 
attention, even though the music embodied in that 
form be of small account in itself; while far more 
important, because more intrinsic developments of 
musical thought escape its notice simply because they 
occur in the course of compositions whose form is more 
or less traditional. Thus it is not so much in the operas 
and oratorios of the early seventeeth century that we 
find those audacious passages and turns of expression 
which seem to foreshadow far more modern methods, 
nor yet in those deliberately programmatical pieces for 
the virginals on which every musical historian dilates 
with such delight, but rather in madrigals and 
songs for the voice and lute, pavans and country 
dances and scholastic-looking contrapuntal fantasias. 

Neither historically nor esthetically can any 
rigid line of distinction be drawn between harmony 
and counterpoint, between monody, or homo- 
phonic music—that is to say, music with a principal 
air or tune supported by a more or less_ subsidiary 
accompaniment — and _ polyphony, which is_ the 
music of many voices balanced equally one 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN . 81 


against another. The florid, dramatically-expressive 
thapsodical style of writing for the voice with 
an instrumental accompaniment was already flourish- 
ing in the middle ages, and had already reached 
a very remarkable degree of excellence in the 
works of Guillaume de Machault in the thirteenth cen- 
tury. It would hardly be going too far to say that 
the free declamatory style, usually supposed to be the 
invention of a little group of late sixteenth-century 
Italian composers—was the very essence of the secular 
music of the middle ages. Four square dance-tunes, 
simply harmonised in four or five parts, can be found 
by the thousand all through the sixteenth century, and 
the principal of substituting a lute or viols for such 
voices aS were not at hand had been universally 
accepted long before Dowland published his first book 
of Ayres in 1597, “so made that all the parts together, 
or either of them severally, may be sung to the Lute, 
Orpherian or Viol de Gambo.” And it is interesting 
to note that Dowland’s last book A Pilgrim’s Solace 
(1612) is at once the most polyphonic of all his works, 
and the one which exhibits the most striking and 
audacious examples of his harmonic invention. 

In a sense, both the harmonic and the musico- 
dramatic experiments of the sixteenth century were 
influenced by the characteristically Renaissance desire 
to revive the arts in the forms in which they were 
practised in ancient Greece, but the experiments 
undertaken in this spirit resulted in the discovery of 
something very much more vital than a mere revival 
of long-forgotten principles. Peri and the other 
archeologists of Count Bardi’s circle, in their anxiety 
to achieve dramatic verisimilitude, were content to 


82 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


sacrifice most of the elements by which music can be 
made expressive, whether it be associated with words 
and action, or not. Monteverdi (as M. Henri 
Pruniéres has shown so admirably in his recent book), 
fired with enthusiasm by their dramatic ideals, was 
sensible enough to see the folly of sacrificing any of 
his purely musical resources upon the altar of dramatic 
truth. He realised that to achieve intensity in the 
expression of words or situations, his musical resources 
must be enriched and not impoverished. In this 
respect Gesualdo may be ranked with him as a com- 
poser whose art is firmly rooted in the polyhonic 
tradition, and whose innovations are in the nature 
of an exuberant growth from the rich soil of the 
past, and not, as the works of Peri and Caccini, the 
dubious and tender first-fruits of a bleak and untilled 
land. 

It is not recorded that Gesualdo played any part 
in the operatic movement of the period, though it 
may be confidently assumed that his passionate 
enthusiasm for music brought him into touch with it at 
least as a spectator. His fame as a composer rests 
entirely upon his madrigals, 147 in number, which 
were published at various dates between 1594 (the 
year of his second marriage) and 1626. | 

It appears that, so far from supervising the 
printing of his works, Gesualdo did not even sanction 
their publication. The earlier books, at any rate, seem 
to have been presented to him as surprise packets. It 
was, of course, a common practice to circulate 
manuscript copies of musical compositions for many 
years before their publication was undertaken, and 
not infrequently a work would be printed for the first 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 83 


time by some unauthorised person from a manuscript 
copy which was far from accurate. Such, apparently, 
was the fate of the madrigals contained in what is 
now known as the Second Book of Gesualdo. These, 
we learn from Scipione Stella’s dedication (though 
we have no further authority for the statement), were 
originally published under the strange pseudonym of 
Gioseppe Pilonij. But, says Stella, “seeing that the 
press, as is its wont, had made several errors, I, on 
account of my ardent desire and great obligation to 
serve you, have taken the trouble to revise them 
minutely and to correct them with diligence, and to 
send them to be reprinted by the same press which 
has already printed another book of your divine 
madrigals.” This dedication is dated June 2nd, 
1594. Although no copy of the “ Pilonij ” madrigals 
has survived—if, indeed, the book was ever really 
printed—there is little doubt that the madrngals in 
question are the earliest of Gesualdo’s published 
compositions. But three weeks before inscribing this 
corrected edition of them to their real author, Stella 
had published another collection of Gesualdo’s 
madrigals, apologising, in his dedication of the book 
to its composer, for having collected and published 
them. Both volumes were printed by Vittorio 
Baldini, the ducal printer of Ferrara, and both were 
issued simply as Wadrigalt a Cinque Voci. It was 
not until they were reprinted by Angelo Gardano in 
Venice that they were called the first and second 
books of madrigals by Gesualdo; and when, ten years 
later still, they were incorporated in the collected 
edition printed in score by Giuseppi Pavoni in 
Genoa, the second book was called the first and the 
G 


84 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


first the second, which seems to prove the priority of 
the “ Pilonij ” book in order of composition. The 
third and fourth books, both printed by Baldini and 
published respectively in 1595 and 1596, were 
sponsored by Hettore Gesualdo. That these two 
books were also issued without the composer’s 
authority is clear from the dedications. Of the 
madrigals in the fourth book, Hettore remarks: “I 
have collected them with infinite avidity and, more 
solicitous for the common good than for your wishes, 
have sent them to the press. I shall not, however, as 
I have done on other occasions, ask your pardon for 
my zeal, since, if you were disposed to take them away 
from me, the whole world would come to my 
defence.” In 1603 two books of Sacrae Cantiones, 
for 5, 6 and 7 voices, were printed in Naples, and in 
1611 the book of six-part Responsoria, the fifth and 
sixth books of madrigals appearing in the same year. 
All these were published by Don Giovanni Pietro 
Capuccio who tells us that the madrigals of the sixth 
book were composed in the same years as those of the 
fifth, ‘“and have therefore been awaited with the 
utmost impatience by the world for a long time.” We 
may therefore assume that, in spite of the marked 
difference in style between these two later books and 
their predecessors, the interval between books 4 and 
5 is not so great as the dates of their respective 
publication might lead us to suppose. In 1613 all 
the six books of madrigals were reprinted in score by 
Giuseppe Pavoni in Genoa and published under the 
auspices of Simone Molinaro, Maestro di Capella 
of the cathedral in Genoa, with the following 
impressive dedication :— 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 85 


ALLA CONCORDE FAMA 
DELLA GENTILEZZA, IMMENSE, INFINITA 
INCOMPARABILE DE’ CANDIDI AMADORI 
DELL’ ARMONIA 
LIMPIDISS. CRISTALI DIMMACULATO INGEGNO 
HUMILI IN SE STESSI 
GLORIOSI IN ALTRI 
CIELISTABILISS. DI TRANSPARENTE VERITA 
SIMONE MOLINARO 
AD ONTA DEL MOLINO TEMPORALE INUINCIBIL DISTRUGGI- 
TORE DELLE TERRENE SPERANZE, SACRA QUESTE 
CANORE PERLE STILLATE NELLA CONCA DELL’ 
ETERNA BELLEZZA DA’ RAGGI DEL PRENCIPE 
DI VENOSA, VENERE NELLA UNION 
DELLE GRATIE, E SOLE DELLA 
VIRTU MUSICALE. 
which, being interpreted, signifies 
To the Concordant Fame 
Of the Nobility, Immense, Infinite, 
Incomparable of pure lovers 
Of Harmony, 
Limpid crystals of immaculate genius, 
Humble in themselves 
Glorying in Others, 
Celestial, of transparent verity, 
Simone Molinaro (Miller) 
To the discomfiture of the Mill of time, the invincible 
destroyer 
Of terrestrial hopes, dedicates these canorous pearls 
Distilled in the conch of eternal beauty by the beams 
Of the Prince of Venosa, Venus in the 
Union of the Graces, and Sun of 
Musical virtues. 


86 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


Of this volume fourteen copies are known to 
survive, five in Italy, four in England, three in Ger- 
many, one in Brussels and one in Vienna. 

In Italy, as in England, madrigals were ordinarily 
published in separate part-books, each voice having a 
volume to itself. The publication of music in full 
score was still something of a novelty, and would not 
have been called for except in the case of a work of 
quite exceptional difficulty and strangeness; but it 
shows that the number of people in Italy who were. 
interested in the nature and structure of music, as 
distinct from those who simply derived pleasure from 
singing or hearing it, was on the increase. Actually 
the first score to be published was a collected edition 
of Cipriano de Rore’s four-part madrigals, which 
was printed in Venice in 1577. On the title-page 
appear the words: 7wtli i Madrigali di Cipriano de 
Rore a 4 voct. Shartiti et accomodati per sonar 
d’ogni sorte d’instromento, et per Qualunque studioso 
de Contrapunti. Practically no manuscript scores of 
any kind have come down to us from this period. To 
the madrigalists, and indeed to the polyphonic com- 
posers generally, a score was simply a rough sketch of 
a composition, to be thrown away as soon as the 
separate parts were copied out. 

There was only one edition of the Gesualdo score 
which is, in consequence, an exceedingly rare book. 
But the various single books of his madrigals were 
frequently reprinted in parts, both before and after the 
publication of the collected edition in score, the first, 
third and fourth books being thrice reprinted, the 
fifth and sixth twice, and the second no fewer than five 
times which, if we include the original issue under the 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 87 


name of Giuseppe Pilonij, proves its popularity to 
have warranted seven editions. Two short and very 
insignificant madrigals of Gesualdo’s which are not 
included in any other collection appear at the end of 
Pomponio Nenna’s eighth book of madrigals (1618). 
Finally, twelve years after the composer’s death, a 
collection of twenty six-part madrigals was published 
by Muzio Effrem, a musician who had been in the 
Prince’s service for twenty-two years. This publica- 
tion has unfortunately not survived, one part-book only 
out of the six being extant. That it contained 
compositions highly characteristic of Gesualdo’s later 
style is evident from a remark of Emil Vogel who 
appears to have examined the surviving part-book. 
Particular interest attaches to the dedication of this 
book, addressed to Gesualdo’s widow, Donna Leonora 
d’Este-Gesualdo, in which Effrem refers to the 
“perfect and exquisite compositions” contained 
therein, by reason of the fact that three years 
previously Effrem had published a violent polemic 
against Marco da Gagliano (Censure .... sopra il 
Sesto Libro de Madrigali da Gagliano) in which he 
revealed himself as a musician of a distinctly con- 
versative turn of mind, accusing Gagliano of “ errors ”’ 
in his compositions, and of violation of the true 
principles of counterpoint—a charge surprising 
enough from one who in the same sentence specifically 
praises the fifth and sixth books of Gesualdo’s 
madrigals which, he says, Gagliano has plagiarized. 
Emil Vogel, who has traced resemblances between the 
fifth and tenth madrigals in Gagliano’s book and 
Gesualdo’s Felicissimo sonno and Tu piangi, 6 Filli 
mia, remarks: “One cannot help wondering how 


G2 


88 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


Effrem came to terms with his conscience over the 
publication of these six-part madrigals. What a 
censure he could have written, had he wished to be 
just, about Gesualdo’s compositions which surpass by 
a long way all the censured liberties of Gagliano’s! 
How outraged he must have felt by the exceedingly 
chromatic madrigal Sei disposto! Or was he perhaps 
paying homage to the principle: Quod licet Jovi non 
licet bovi?”* There can be no doubt that it was to 
Gesualdo’s position and wealth rather than to the 
intrinsic merits of his music that the more effusive of 
his admirers paid homage in their written tributes; but 
when one has made due allowance for a certain 
amount of snobbishness in the musical public of the 
time, it is clear that his works achieved a very real and 
widespread popularity. Contemporary writers praised 
him in the most extravagant terms. For example 
Josephus Blancanus, in his Chronologia celebrorum 
mathematicorum (1615) refers to him as “Nobilissimus 
Carolus Gesualdus, Princeps Venusinus, nostrae 
tempestatis musicorum ac melopoeorum princeps,” 
and continues: “ Hic enim rhythmis in musicam 
revocatis, eos, tum ad cantum, tum ad sonum, modulos 
adhibuit, ut ceteri omnes musici ei primas libenter 
detulerint, ejusque modos cantores ac fidicines omnes, 
reliquis posthabitis ubique avide complectuntur.” 


* There is no reason to suppose, as Eitner does in the Quellenlexicon, 
that the Effrem we are dealing with was not the Mutio Effrem of Bari who 
contributed to an anthology of villanelle by musicians of Bari which was 
published in 1574. He would therefore have been an old man at the time 
of his controversy with Gagliano. The date of his death is unknown. 

* This passage caused Ambros to postulate the existence of certain 
instrumental compositions of Gesualdo which have not come down to us. 
It seems more probable, however, that, like so many of his English con- 
temporaries, he wrote music that was ‘‘ apt for voices or viols ’’—a view 
which is corroborated by the title of the Cipriano de Rore score to which 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 89 


This is certainly an exaggerated statement in one 
respect, for Gesualdo had no direct imitators or 
successors, though it is not unreasonable to hold his 
influence responsible for the harmonic experiments of 
some of the later monodists such as Saraceni and 
Belli; but the testimony of Blancanus is by no means 
an isolated example. 

The first English reference to Gesualdo occurs in 
the chapter on music in The Compleat Gentleman of 
Henry Peacham (1622) where the author, after 
referring to the musical accomplishments of King 
Henry the Eighth, says: ‘‘ The Duke of Venosa, an 
Italian Prince, in like manner, of late yeares, hath 
given excellent proofe of his knowledge and love to 
Musicke, having himselfe composed many rare songs, 
which I have seene.”’ 

Athanasius Kircher, in his /usurgia (1650) says 
that the Prince of Venosa was by universal consent the 
first to bring music to its present state of excellence, 
and that all musicians respect and admire him. Doni, 
who calls him “truly the Prince of modern composers,” 
is at one with a later writer, Archangelo Spagna 
(Oratori overo Melodrammi: Rome, 1706) in 
attributing to the influence of Gesualdo many of the 
later developments of the operatic style, particularly 
the dramatic recitative and the affeltuoso manner in 
musical expression. Later in the eighteenth century 


reference has already been made. And it is not unlikely, when one considers 
the formidable difficulties they must have presented to the singers of the 
period, that Gesualdo’s madrigals were performed with some kind of 
instrumental accompaniment, a conjecture which is supported by the fact 
that the madrigals in Monteverdi’s fifth book (1605) are provided with a 
figured bass (continuo) in addition to the vocal bass-part. The library of 
Christ Church, Oxford, contains a manuscript Basso continuo part of 
Gesualdo’s first, second, and fourth books of madrigals. 


90 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


the learned Padre Martini, the friend of Frederick the 
Great and one of the earliest admirers of the genius of 
Mozart, says that Gesualdo’s style “ abounds in all 
the refinements of art.” - A few years later still Sir - 
John Hawkins, after quoting various authorities in 
support of his view, says of Gesualdo: “ The 
distinguishing excellences of the compositions of this 
admirable author are, fine contrivance, original 
harmony, and the sweetest modulation conceivable; 
and these he possessed in so eminent a degree that one 
of the finest musicians that these later times have 
known, Mr. Geminiani, has been often heard to 
declare that he laid the foundation of his studies in 
the works of the Principe de Venosa ’’—albeit the 
influence of Gesualdo is as far to seek in the com- 
positions of Mr. Geminiani as it is in those of “ the 
celebrated English composer Mr. Purchill” and in the 
organ fugues of Handel which a later historian, Orlov, 
(Essai sur Vhistoire de la musique en Italie, 1822) 
would have us believe were also indebted to the 
Principe. Hawkins, who seems to have had but a 
superficial first-hand acquaintance with the Prince’s 
music, quotes in full the first two madrigals of the 
collected edition (that is, numbers 1 and 2 of Book IT.) 
on the strength of their having been praised by Kircher 
in his Musurgia universalis (1650). Dr. Charles 
Burney, on the other hand, though he can find nothing 
in Gesualdo’s music “except unprincipled modula- 
tion, and the perpetual embarrassments and inexperi- 
ence of an amateur in the arrangement and filling up 
of the parts,” at least had the necessary knowledge 
and the good sense to select for reproduction in his 
General History of Music (1776) the madrigal Moro 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN gi 


lasso—one of the finest examples of Gesualdo’s mature 
style—though he characterises it as “‘ extremely shock- 
ing and disgusting to the ear,” a judgment which seems 
rather singular by comparison with a sentence which 
occurs earlier in the same work: “ What kind of music 
is most pleasing to mankind? To practised ears, such 
as has the merit of novelty, added to refinement, and 
ingenious contrivance ; to the ignorant, such as is most 
familiar and common.” _ But then Burney’s view of 
music in general was rather singular, as is evident 
from his wonderful definition of the function of the 
art: “What is Music? An innocent luxury, 
unnecessary, indeed, to our existence, but a great 
improvement and gratification of the sense of 
hearing.” 

At this point the name of Gesualdo disappears 
from English musical literature. The Germans, 
however, begin to pay increasing attention to him. 
Winterfeld’s Johannes Gabrieli und seines Zeitalter 
(1834) contains excerpts from his works and a glowing 
appreciation of their expressive qualities; the third 
edition of Ambros’s Geschichte der Musik (1909) 
contains, in addition to the detailed account which 
Ambros gave of him, a new chapter on the rise of 
chromaticism in Italy by Hugo Leichtentritt; and 
Theodor Kroyer’s Die Anfinge der Chromatik im 
Ttalienischen Madrigal des XVI Jahrhunderts (1902) 
and Ferdinand Keiner’s monograph Die M/adrigale 
Gesualdos von Venosa (1914) provide an immense 
amount of information about the music of this period 
which is not to be found in any of the English 
histories of music. 


92 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


II 


How do we listen to old music and how much of 
its import can we assimilate, unsullied by extraneous 
associations? We cannot listen ear to ear with its 
contemporary hearers. To do so we should have to 
project ourselves into our period as fully and as 
exclusively as Pirandello’s Henry the Fourth. We 
should have to forget all subsequent music, and, with 
the aid of theoretical treatises, so distort our natural 
mentality that all the cumbersome machinery 
prescribed by the text-books would have to be 
brought into action before we could re-think a passage 
with a sixteenth century mind (for we cannot pre- 
suppose in ourselves the quality of genius that alone 
can surmount such limitations). The appearance of 
a D flat would be fraught with hazardous potentialities 
and an excursion into B major an adventure into the 
heart of an unknown country. 

The ears of a modern child are, in a sense, less 
innocent than those of a 16th century adult, for a 
child’s acquaintance with music does not develop 
along historical lines. For a modern child the simplest 
examples of music will be found to date from the 
eighteenth or nineteenth centuries; the sixteenth and 
the twentieth alike provide some of the most complex. 
(This distinction refers merely to the texture of music. 
Where appreciation is concerned, the child of to-day 
may very likely derive more immediate pleasure from 
Ravel than from Haydn). 

The modern adult, with a fair knowledge of 
music of all periods, cannot without a great effort 
listen to old music with other than twentieth century 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 93 


ears. He is therefore prone to make constant com- 
parison in his mind between the music of the past 
and that of his own day, unconsciously or, worse, even 
deliberately seeking in it anticipations of later phases 
of the art. But this is an esthetic fallacy, for all old 
music was modern once, and it were well if, once and 
for all, the habit of classifying music by means of a 
sliding scale of “ ancient and modern ” were dropped. 
In Ae ages there is good music and bad music: music 
does not in any sense gvogress, and in no conceivable 
respect can the first-rate music of to-day be regarded 
as an advance on the first-rate music of the sixteenth 
or any other century. But the music of the sixteenth 
century has one important if somewhat negative, 
point in common with that of the twentieth, and the 
reason for the revival of interest in sixteenth century 
music at this particular and present period of musical 
development is not far to seek. During the past 
twenty years we have shed many prejudices and petty 
tyrannies of tradition which have hindered our 
appreciation of the unfamiliar in music, whether it be 
very new or very old; and of these perhaps the most 
formidable was the tyranny of that limited tonality 
which derives from a too exclusive reliance on tonic- 
and-dominant methods. The key system of the 
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, so far from being 
an improvement on the older conception of sound- 
relations and the perfected goal towards which earlier 
musicians had been blindly striving (as the theorists 
would have us believe), is but a relic of the decadence 
of the modal system which contained within itself all 
the potentialities of our major and minor tonality. 
The tonality of the key-system is no more than a 


94 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


limitation imposed upon the freedom of modal writing. 
The diatonic convention has given us a great deal of 
magnificent music, but it remains, for all that, a 
tributary stream, not the main river, of musical 
development. To ears that are satiated with the 
diatonic, one of the chief delights of modal music is 
its quality of unexpectedness which, paradox though 
it may seem, does not altogether wear off with 
familiarity. The absence of key-feeling and the 
illusion of free and wayward modulation present us 
with continual surprises; and it is this element of 
surprise which chromaticism so greatly enhanced. So 
far from leading modal harmony into the direction of 
the key-system, it led it rather towards the modern 
juxtaposition of diatonically remote chords in a 
sequence that is logically justified by a thread of 
melody. In polyphonic music we can trace the most 
surprising twists of harmony to a single semitonic 
inflection, and careful examination can always reveal 
a definitely expressive purpose underlying the 
progression. There can be no doubt that the old 
composers felt, as we do, that chromaticism quite 
literally gave colour to music. 

It is difficult for the modern student of Gesualdo’s 





* But we who have been brought up on the diatonic must beware, when 
first approaching modal music, of mistaking idiom for poetry, and appraising 
as rare treasures of creative expression passages which represent only the 
current coin of musical utterance. Anyone reading in a foreign language 
with which he is but imperfectly acquainted will be frequently in doubt 
whether a phrase is an image invented by the author or merely a con- 
ventional formula of the language. A writer in The Times Literary 
Supplement recently described the idioms of a language as ‘‘ a kind of 
crystallised popular poetry,’’ adding that ‘‘ many a passage of Chaucer 
strikes us still as on the borderland between poetry and idiom, as composed 
of phrases which might have come to him from the lips of the people or 
might have passed from his lips to theirs.’ Similarly, many phrases in 
the plays of J. M. Synge which strike us as being singularly pcetical are 
found to be simply literal translations of Gaelic idiom into English speech. 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 95 


music to clear his mind of diatonic prejudices sufh- 
ciently to appreciate the fact that Gesualdo stands as 
far away on the other side of the tonic-and-dominant 
system as certain modern composers, whose idiom may 
be roughly described as one of modality tempered by 
chromaticism, stand on this side of it. In many ways 
the music of the early twentieth century is akin to that 
of the early seventeenth. Realism, impressionism, 
tone-painting, experiments in sound-for-sound’s sake 
were then, as now, preoccupations of many composers. 
Examples abound in the works of Byrd and Dowland 
and Weelkes and other Englishmen of the time—to 
go no further afield. It is the twelve-note scale that 
is the basis of Gesualdo’s compositions (in so far as 
they have, unconsiously enough, a theoretical basis at 
all) rather than the ecclesiastical modes on the one 
hand or the diatonic major and minor scales on the 
other. Most of the speculations of Busoni, in his 
New A sthetic of Music, and other recent investiga- 
tions such as those of Alois Haba, on the possible 
sub-division of the octave into intervals smaller than 
the semitone, were anticipated by Nicola Vicentino in 
the middle of the sixteenth century, but neither he nor 
any of his successors have been able to turn their 
investigations to any great practical account. 
Vicentino, with his School of Musical Mysteries, his 
keyboard instrument, with several manuals, on which 
each tone is sub-divided into five different notes, and 
his madrigals that can be sung in five different ways 
to the same notes (with partial or complete observance 
of the accidental signs “ sharp,” “ flat,” “ natural,” 
and “enharmonic dieses,” or quarter-tone) was nothing 
more than-an enquiring theorist, an “ objective 


96 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


investigator.” But Gesualdo was a creative artist 
whose best works retain their expressive significance 
to the present day; and since practice is always ahead 
of theory in musical matters, it is almost impossible 
for the technical parlance of his day to provide any 
explanation of the workings of his strange mind. 
Harmonic analysis in modern terms, such as Keinerhas 
made, is equally useless, if not actually pernicious. 
It will be far more profitable for those who encounter 
Gesualdo’s music for the first time in these pages to 
consider it as a purely expressive phenomenon, and to 
bring as little historical and theoretical prejudice to 
the study of it as they would bring to the study of 
their own contemporaries. 

Count Bardi and his little coterie of musicians, — 
fired with enthusiasm for Greek art and wishing to 
resuscitate what they conceived to be the methods of 
melodic declamation, or recitative as we should now 
call it, employed in the performance of the ancient 
Greek drama, set to work and achieved instead the 
creation of an entirely new kind of music as remote as 
music could possibly be from ancient Greek practice. 
Greek music was essentially a melodic art. Neither 
harmony, as we understand it, nor the combination of 
independent melodies were known to them. To their 
ears the only concordant intervals, or melodic- 
relations, were the fourth below and the fifth above a 
given note: and its octaves, above and below. The 
octave was divided into two ¢etrachords (or intervals of 
four notes) separated by a whole tone—that is, by the 
difference between the two consonant intervals. The 
tetrachord was, in its turn, sub-divided into three and 
only three, smaller intervals in three different ways, 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 97 


which were called by Aristides Quintilianus (B.c. 110), 
a disciple of Aristoxenus who seems to have been the 
first theorist to refer all questions of consonance and 
dissonance to the judgment of the ear rather than to 
that of mathematics, “‘ the enharmonic, the chromatic, 
and the diatonic.” ‘“ The diatonic,” he says, “is so 
called because it proceeds by, or abounds in, ¢ones, 
The chromatic is so termed because, as that which 1s 
between white and black is called Colour, so also 
that which holds the middle place between the two 
former genera as this does, is named Chroma. 
The diatonic is the most natural of all, because it may 
be sung by everyone, even by such as are unlearned. 
The most artificial (reyuxw#ratrov) is the chromatic, for 
only learned men can modulate it; but the most 
accurate is the enharmonic: it is approved of only by 
the most skilful musicians, for those who are otherwise 
look on the quarter-tone as an interval which can by 
no means be sung, and to these, by reason of the 
debility of their faculties, the use of this genus is 
impossible.” Thus the diatonic tetrachord scale of 
the tonic A would run E, F, G, A; the chromatic, 
I, F, F sharp, A; and the enharmonic, E, the quarter- 
tone above F, F natural, A. It will be evident from 
the above that Greek music differed fundamentally 
from anything known in later European practice.’ 
Now, in spite of our old friend the Unko 
* Intervals smaller than a semitone, and intervals compounded of semi- 
tones exceeded by such an interval may still be heard from folk-singers 
who have preserved the genuine tradition of folk-singing, particularly in the 
West of Ireland. For this reason there is a great disparity between Irish 
folk-songs as heard and the same songs as read from the printed page, as 
these intervals have never been measured accurately enough to permit of 
their being accurately notated. Cf. Béla Barték: Volksmusik der Rumdnen 


von Maramures (1923) on a similar phenomenon in the folk-music of Eastern 
Europe. 


98 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


(Hylobates Raffles) who has been heard by 
travellers to sing complete chromatic scales with 
perfect intonation and great intensity of feeling in the 
forests and jungles of India, the diatonic genus 
remained the most “natural” for human singers in 
Europe, and by the eleventh century of the Christian 
era, when Guido d’Arezzo devised his system of 
Hexachords (or diatonic series of six notes with a semi- 
tonic interval between the third and fourth sounds), the 
other two genera had been both in practice and theory 
discarded in favour of it. In Guido’s system, which 
consists of the simple transposition of the same series of 
intervals on to different bases (Gamut, or the G on the 
bottom line of the bass clef, C, F, G, c, f, g), we see 
the root of the modern principles of scale and tonality. 
The word gamut was used to signify both the lowest 
note of the system and the entire scale of sounds con- 
tained in the system; and if we visualise the word 
scale (which, of course, was never. used in connection 
with music until a much later date) literally as a 
ladder, we shall find the different modes (or melodic 
intervals considered in relation to compass) perched 
upon its different rungs.’ But, to continue the figure 
of speech, the rungs do not all occur at equal intervals. 
For instance, between the third and fifth notes (A and 
C) of the third hexachord (which begins on F) we find 
not only the natural diatonic note of that hexachord 
(B flat) intervening, but also the third note (B natural) 
of the overlapping fourth hexachord which has begun 


? For the only lucid account of the modes in English, see R. O. Morris: 
Contrapuntal Technique in the Sixteenth Century, which is the best book 
on counterpoint in the English language, being based upon first-hand study 
of the works of the great masters, not upon information gleaned from previous 
theorists. 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 99 


again on the G below. Sooner or later some relation- 
ship will have to be established between them, although 
at first sight they do not appear to be on speaking 
terms. 

We observe, however, that the passage from one 
hexachord into the next above it is always made by 
means of the semitonic interval: the principle 
of the sharp “ leading-note,” apparently based upon 
an instinctive demand of the ear coupled with a desire 
to avoid the melodic interval of the tritone resulting 
from a succession of three whole tones, is at once 
apparent. The same principle necessitates the 
flattening in descent, of the note which had been 
sharpened in ascent. This sharpening and flattening 
of the notes of a melody in accordance with the 
dictates of the ear was known as musica ficta, music 
made consequently false. 

It will be readily seen that the combination of the 
principle of musica ficta with that of transposition 
could not but lead towards the filling up of the gaps 
in the gamut and the establishment of what we now 
regard as the complete chromatic scale. Long 
before they recognized it as such, musicians 
could contemplate the chromatic scale spread out 
before their eyes on the keyboards of their organs and 
virginals, and on the frets of their lutes. But we must 
remember that as a matter of acoustical fact, G sharp 
and A flat, for example, are far from being identical, 
and it is only by the adoption of the compromising 
system of equal temperament that we are enabled, 
as a matter of convenience, to regard them as a single 
note. They were, at any rate, clearly differentiated 
in the minds of musicians for long after keyboard 


H 


F 


100 ~=CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


instruments had come into common use. Thus 
Thomas Morley in a certain passage in his Plaine and 
E-asie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597) says 
“that those virginals which our unlearned musytians 
cal cromatica (and some also grammatica) be not right 
chromatica, but half enharmonica; and that al the 
chromatica may be expressed uppon our common 
virginals except this: | quoting the G-A flat above 
middle C] for if you would thinke that the sharpe in 
g sol re ut’ would serve that turne by experiment, you 
shall find that it is more than half a quarter of a note 
too low.” Yet less than twenty years after these 
words were written, John Bull composed a piece for 
the virginals in which these notes, A flat and G sharp, 
both occur within the same bar. This goes far to 
explain how Vincentino and other composers of the 
same period “split upon enharmonic rocks and 
chromatic quicksands ” ; and we can see how the term 
enharmonic gradually lost its original meaning of a 
quarter-tone, or smaller, interval and acquired its 
present significance. 

In attempting a rapid survey of the rise and 
development of chromaticism during the three cen- 
turies preceding Gesualdo, it is necessary to make one 
important reservation at the very outset. Our 
evidence, for the earlier period, is almost exclusively 
derived from the works of theorists who concerned 
themselves almost exclusively with sacred music. The 
eccleciastical authorities have always been averse to 
experiments and innovations in the music of the 
Church. It is therefore not surprising that from an age 


* For a clear exposition of this method of nomenclature, see Grove’s 
Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Article on Solmization. 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 101 


when book learning and even the art of writing was 
largely confined to ecclesiastics the record that has 
survived of its musical achievements should be one- 
sided and therefore incomplete. The impulse to sing, 
from which the musically creative faculty arises, is a 
constant factor in the human mind, and the intuitions 
of creative minds have always necessarily preceded 
the theories which have been invented in the attempt 
to explain them in terms of verbal reason and logic. 
It is therefore extremely unlikely that anything more 
helpful to our esthetic (as distinct from our archezo- 
logical) appreciation of the music of the fifteenth and 
sixteenth centuries can be gleaned from the con- 
temporary text-books, or the modern ones based upon 
them, than the very meagre assistance we obtain for 
our understanding of modern music from the academic 
treatises of the nineteenth century. There 1s 
no continuity in the history of musical theory. In 
sixteenth century music, particularly, one often comes 
across a passage which contemporary theorists would 
have been hard pressed to explain, yet such passages 
almost invariably have an air of complete assurance; 
there is nothing haphazard or tentative about them. 
The explanation is no doubt to be found in the 
absence of any adequate record of the secular music 
of the middle ages. We know that the Troubadours 
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries developed the 
art of melodic composition to a very high degree of 
perfection, working along quite different lines from 
those pursued by the musicians of the Church. 
Giraldus Cambrensis, writing in the twelfth century, 
strikes a spark of light in the darkness in which the 
music of the people is enveloped in his account of the 


102 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


improvised part-singing of Northumbria and Wales. 
From the thirteenth century we have Sumer is icumen 
im—another isolated beacon of light; and from the 
fourteenth the astonishing songs of Guillaume de 
Machault, which are in their way as audacious and 
original as anything of Gesualdo. There can be little 
doubt that the influence of popular music on the work 
of composers trained to the current theories of 
composition became increasingly strong in the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, though we have little 
direct evidence to corroborate the evidence provided 
by these composers’ own works. 

Reverting to the early theorists, the thirteenth 
century /ztroductio musicae secundum Johannem de 
Garlandia tells us that “ false music is when we make 
a semitone of a tone,” and conversely. Every tone 
is divisible into two semitones, and consequently signs 
signifying semitones can be attached to all tones.” 
Marchettus of Padua, writing in 1274, describes the 
chromatic alteration of a note by means of accidentals 
as permutatio, and quotes the following example :-— 


PMARCKEPTUS OF PRIVA. 127H - 





In a later work, dating from the early years of the 
fourteenth century, Marchettus makes an interesting 
protest against the term musica falsa. The word false, 
he argues, implies something that is bad or wrong, and 
'since accidentals are.only introduced into music in 


* Falsa musica est quando de tono facimus semitonium et e converso. 


Omnis tonus divisibilis est in duo semitonia et per consequens signa 
semitonia designantia in omnibus tonis possunt amplificiari. 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 103 


order to make it more harmonious and beautiful it 
would be better and more appropriate to call such 
music “coloured” (or as we should say, chromatic) 
and so avoid the suspicion that there was anything 
erroneous about it. But by far the most important 
authority on medizval chromaticism is Prosdocimus 
de Beldemandis whose 7vactatus de contrapunctu 
dates from 1412. Prosdocimus tells us flatly that 
those who say that the whole tone can be divided into 
five equal parts are liars. He recognises only two 
kinds of semitone, calling the difference between them 
a ““croma” (for example A flat—G sharp). Then, 
invoking the authority of his beloved and intellec- 
tually-enlightened colleague, Master Nicolaus de 
Collo de Conegliano, doctor of medicine and of the 
liberal arts, he says that there are two ways of dividing 
a tone into semitones, one by flattening the upper 
note, the other by sharpening the lower. By putting 
the two methods together, he arrives—the first theorist 
in musical history to do so—at a complete enharmonic- 
chromatic scale of seventeen notes within the octave : 


pbc? ebp# Gbrt abct sat 
G D EF oe a B 


He admits that the notes D sharp and A sharp 
were very rarely used, but he shows where they may 
be found in case anyone should want them; and he 
gives a striking example of the use of accidentals in 


* ““Cum ergo tale signum sit repertum in musica ad pulcriores 
consonantias reperiendas et faciendas, et falsum in quantum falsum semper 
sumatur in mala parte potius quam in bona (quod est enim falsum, nunquam 
bonum est): ideo salva reverentia aliorum dicimus, quod magis debet et 
proprius nominari musica colorata quam falsa, per quod nomen falsitatis 
[vituperium] attribuimus eidem.”’ 


H2 


104 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


counterpoint which seems all the more remarkable to 
us for its inclusion of the melodic interval of the 
tritone, or augmented fourth which earlier writers 
shunned as the devil and theorists long continued to 
prohibit. 





Thus Johannes Tinctoris, who was maestro di 
cappella at the court of Ferdinand of Aragon, King of 
Naples, from 1475 to 1487, and founded a school of 
music which was reorganized more than a century 
later by Gesualdo, says that augmented and 
diminished intervals should, if possible, be avoided, 
but admits that examples of their use can be found 
even in the works of the best masters. 





Despite the theoretical admission of the full range 
of chromaticism early in the fifteenth century, the 
licenses of musica ficta were very little used during 
the next hundred and fifty years. For a long while 
the use of accidentals was purely inflectional, 
occasioned by the line of individual voice parts for the 
sake of achieving smooth and easy cadences. If the 
employment of an accidental in one part caused a 
dissonance, such as an augmented or diminished 
interval, between that part and another, the harmonic 
effect was purely accidental and was originally 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN LO 


regarded as a somewhat lamentable occurrence that 
could not be helped. The earlier composers aimed 
first at a good melodic line for each separate voice; 
then at rhythmic independence of parts. The vertical 
relation between one part and another, in unrhythmic 
note-against-note music, was confined to simple con- 
cords, save on the rare occasions when the use of an 
accidental in one part caused a momentary clash. The 
development of rhythmic independence of parts 
brought about the necessity for frequent suspensions 
or, as one might say, the overlapping of two chords, 
one voice anticipating or lagging behind the others. 
And now the word “chord ” has perforce crept in as 
it should not at this early stage; for although the early 
contrapuntal composers obtained many beautiful 
effects of harmony and of tone-colour by careful 
spacing and grouping of their voices, they were always 
preoccupied with the horizontal aspect of their work, 
beauty of line in each part and what one may term 
the rhythmic flow of the whole piece. At a later date 
certain unusual combinations of sounds which had 
originally occurred ex passant, as the result of inter- 
weaving two strands of rhythmically independent 
melody, were found to be good in themselves. These 
could be detached from their context and used else- 
where in a different way; and so we arrive at the idea 
of purely harmonic effects. It is, when you come to 
think of it, a miraculous thing that men who were 
entirely unaccustomed to think of music in terms of 
chords, yet managed to achieve (at first half uncon- 
sciously) by skilful manipulation of lines and rhythms 
alone harmonic .effects of the greatest beauty and 
appropriateness. passage like this, from a Mass 


106 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


of Brumel, composed in the early years of the 
sixteenth century, 





strikes us as being as bold in its harmony as many a 
flight of the later chromaticists, yet it was certainly 
not thought of as harmony by the composer, all the 
fine effect being achieved by means of suspensions, 
passing notes and the rhythmic interplay of the 
different voice parts. We, who have all been brought 
up on the four-square tune harmonized in chords which 
are merely subsidiary to the tune, necessarily find it 
very difficult to cast our minds back to the time when 
music was conceived in terms of pure line. We find 
it hard to realize that a passage of Palestrina, for 
example, which seems to us to be a straightforward 
sequence of four-part chords, was undoubtedly con- 
ceived by the composer as four interwoven strands of 
melody. But if we fail to realize this fact, we cannot 
properly appreciate the significance of those com- 
posers who first thought of employing purely harmonic 
effects to heighten the expressive power of their music. 

The madrigal—the most important form of secular 
music in the sixteenth century—came into being in 
Italy about the year 1530; and it is in the madrigals of | 
the succeeding seventy-five years that the gradual | 
development of the harmonic sense can best be 
studied. All through this period we find that the use 
of discords, chromaticism and bold original harmonic 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 107 


progressions, are invariably occasioned by some 
particular emotional point in the words of the madrigal 
which the composer wished to emphasize in his music. 
It is to the quest of ever more vivid means of 
expression rather than to any theoretical speculations 
that we owe the most important musical discoveries of 
the sixteenth century. As early as 1539 there occurs 
in a madrigal of Costanzo Festa a typical example of . 
a method of emphasizing a particular word that 
persisted right through the century. Here the word 
dolor is illustrated by the use of a sudden discord : 





About this time the influence of Adrian Willaert, 
a Flemish musician who had been appointed maestro 
di cappella of St. Mark’s at Venice in 1527, began to 
make itself felt, though it is rather as an enlightened 
teacher, ever eager to encourage the researches and 
experiments of his pupils, than as a composer that the 
name of Willaert is remembered. His most 
distinguished pupil was Cipriano de Rore, who 
eventually succeeded him at St. Mark’s; and it is on 
the title page of a book of madrigals by Cipriano that 
we first encounter, in any shape or form, the 
word chromatic—not curiously enough in the first 
edition, published in 1542, but in the second which 
appeared two years later under the title Primo Libro 
de Madrigali Cromatict a cinque voci. Venetia, 
A. Gardano, 1544. In the following year Vincenzo 


108 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


Ruffo published a book of Wadrigali a quatro voci a 
notte negre which, in the third edition (1552) are 
described as Madrigali Cromatici. Examples of the 
use of the word could be multiplied from the title- 
pages of madrigal books published about this time. 
The idea of a mew music was in the air. In 1546 
appeared a volume entitled Nicola Vicentino, del 
unico Adrian Waillaerth discipulo .. Madrigali a 
cingue voci per Teorica et pratica da lui composti al 
nuovo modo dal celeberrimo suo maestro ritrovato. 
In 1555 came Orlando di Lasso’s Quatorsiesme Livre 
a 4 parties (18 chansons italiennes, 6 chansons 
frangaises, 6 Motets, a la Nouvelle composition 
ad’ aucuns d’[talie) of which two editions were published 
by Tylman Susato at Antwerp, one in Italian and one 
in French. And in.1559 Willaert issued a volume 
with the title A/usica Nova. Much of the “ novelty ” 
of the compositions contained in these books seems 
very tame to us when we compare it with what 
followed soon afterwards from Gesualdo and his 
contemporaries. But even in this early period we 
find some very striking examples of adventurously 
chromatic harmony. The following is from a madrigal, 
specially designated Cromaticho, by Cesare Tudino 
(1554): 
CESARE TuDIwo, l65p, 


me bale te 6 GL. Pde Pasco, Co tui acl ne che Gh enio Semen > Somme 


— ey = V4 al a p 4 








a FP —Pr 4 ee eee ——— 


ig 4 a 


It may be mentioned here, @ propos the title of 
Tudino’s book, that the word cromatico had at least 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 109 


two different meanings in the middle of the sixteenth 
century. One corresponded roughly to our present- 
day sense and implied semitonic inflections and the 
use of accidentals in the music; the other was derived 
from the fact that the Italian word for a crotchet 
(which was then considered a very short note, the use 
of which corresponded approximately to our modern 
use of the quaver) was, and still is, croma. In this 
sense the word cromatico implies the use of the 
crotchet instead of the customary minim as the unit of 
time in the composition. It is further possible that 
the word carried a double significance, for the crotchet 
was a black inky note and its satellite the quaver had a 
black inky tail, whereas the minim and the semibreve 
were white and open. The word cromatico might 
therefore convey the idea of fighly-coloured 
figuration, notated in quavers and semiquavers which 
would impart to the printed page an appearance of 
singular and unwonted blackness. 

The Quatorsiesme Livre of Orlando di Lasso 
referred to above contains two interesting specimens 
of chromatic writing in the two Latin odes “ Alma 
Nemes” and ‘“ Calami sonum ferentes”’ set to 
music by Lasso and Cipriano de Rore respectively. 
(Both are printed in full in Burney’s General History 
of Music). Of these Cipriano’s is by far the most 
enterprising piece of work. Lasso, indeed, did but 
toy with the methods of the new school with which he 
doubtless became acquainted during his travels in 
Italy in the service of Ferdinand Gonzaza in the early 
fifteen-fifties. He was certainly in Rome in June, 
1551, when Vicentino and Lusitano held their famous 
public debate on the question of the three “ genera ”’ 


110 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


—diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic—and being at 
that time a young man he may have been somewhat 
impressed by the expressive possibilities offered by 
the new theories. But he seems to have become 
dissatisfied with the new methods in later life, employ- 
ing chromaticism only to express such words as error, 
distortion and evil in his texts. The closing bars of 
his Latin ode may be quoted here : 





Cipriano de Rore appears to have been a composer 
of very considerable attainments, but practically 
nothing of his work has been reprinted in modern 
times. His Latin ode displays not only an harmonic 
sense very much in advance of that of his 
contemporaries, but also a remarkable sense of tone-- 
colour, being designed for the unusual combination of 
four bass voices which would impart a singular 
atmosphere of gloom to the close chromatic 
harmonies. It is possible that an even earlier date 
than 1555 may be assigned to this astonishing com- 
position. Lasso would seem to have included it in 
his book as an act of homage to the elder master, and 
as a kind of acknowledgment to the work on which 
he had modelled his own composition on similar lines, 
which shows that Rore’s ode was presumably well- 
known when Lasso was in Italy. The opening bars 
of the ode may be quoted here: 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN III 





together with a curiously Tannhauserish passage from 
the middle of the work : 





Another beautiful example of Cipriano’s use of 
novel harmonic progressions, combined with a fine 
feeling for phrase and cadence occurs in the madrigal 
“Dalle belle contrade,” from the fifth book of five- 
part madrigals (1566) : 


re 


Et aa SS ERB 
Aa a eee ft —— Py PP 





The year 1555 is also notable for the publication 
of Vicentino’s treatise L’antica Musica ridotta alla 


112 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


moderna prattica in which the author expounds at 
great length his theories of the three “ genera” and 
also describes his ‘ Archicembalo,’ a keyboard 
instrument with six manuals, so tuned that every tone 
was divided into five parts; and in 1558 appeared the 
famous J/stitulioni armonishe of Zarlino which 
contains an account of a quarter-tone keyboard 
instrument which Zarlino had built ten years earlier. 
Nor were these by any means the only experiments 
made at this period with the object of enlarging the 
potential range of musical sounds. 

It cannot be said that Vicentino displayed any 
great talent or originality as a composer, in spite of his 
description of himself, on the title-page of his fifth — 
book of five-part madrigals published in 1572 as 
Parcimusico . . . Pratico et theorico et imventore 
delle nuove harmonie. But he was certainly a bold 
adventurous spirit who probably exerted a very 
considerable influence upon the composers of his day. 

Brief mention of the JZadrigali Cromatici of 
Giandomenico La Martoretta (1552), Vincenzo Ruffo 
(1552), Giulio Fiesco (1554), Pietro Taglia (1555), 
Francesco Manara (1555) and Francesco Orso (1567), 
whose setting of the 164th Sonnet of Petrarch shows 
a very considerable degree of skill and imagination 
in the illustrative treatment of words, and Ludovico 
Agostini (1570), will suffice to show how widespread 
was the chromatic movement at this time. Even 
Palestrina was not wholly unaffected by it.” All 
through this period we see the gradual breaking-up of . 





* See Peter Wagner: Das Madrigal und Palestrina: Vierteljahrschrift 
fiir Musikwissenschaft 1892, VIII, where a large number of references to 
Palestrina’s work are given. 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 113 


the old modal system by the growing forces of 
chromaticism. The Guidonian hexachord which had 
hitherto provided the basis of all musical instruction 
was challenged by several speculative theorists, 
notably by Hubert Waelrant of Antwerp CES07s 1595) 
who added a seventh syllable to the six in ordinary 
use, thus giving a clearer definition to the principle of 
the leading-note. The old conception of exharmonic 
as implying the use of quarter-tones gradually gave 
way to the modern sense—by 1581 we find Marenzio’s 
employing the notes F sharp and G flat in the same 
chord. Notation, too, passed through certain 
experimental phases of which the most curious was 
Orso’s method of notating a rising chromatic sequence 
of notes, writing 





where the effect intended was 


PS SSS 


The most common method of noting chromatic 
alterations was by the placing of an accidental 
immediately before each note which was to be raised 
or lowered. This method, having first been employed 
in unbarred music was continued without modification 
for some time after the introduction of lute tablature 
and vocal music in score had rendered the use of bars 
almost essential. In sixteenth and early seventeenth 
century music, as a general rule, all notes are zaturals 
except those immediately preceded by an accidental. 


114. CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


There was no specific sign for a xatural, although 
sometimes we find a sharpened note specifically made 
natural by the use of the p sign, or a flattened note 
specifically naturalized by a ¥. If, however, an Fe 
occurred on the first beat of a bar, the t would not 
necessarily affect any subsequent F which might occur 
within that bar; without further evidence to the 
contrary the second F must be assumed to be natural. 

Experiments in “ word-painting,” of considerable 
interest from the technical point of view, and by no 
means negligible from the zsthetic, were made by 
Rocco Rodio’ (1587) and Giuseppe Caimo (1585). 
Here is a remarkable example of Caimo’s treatment of 
the words “ aspre spine ” (sharp thorns) : 





But all these composers fade into comparative 
insignificance beside the distinguished figure of Luca 
Marenzio, the greatest of all the Italian madrigalists. 
In melodic invention, allied to the most consummate 
skill in the handling of polyphonic structures in the 
traditional manner, he was rivalled only by Palestrina 
among his own countrymen; but while Palestrina paid 
but little heed to the methods of the newer harmonic 
school, Marenzio, like his great English peer and 
contemporary, William Byrd, was keenly alive to 
the possibilities of the new style. While the 

+ A theorist as well as a composer, whose Regole per far contrappunto 


sole e accompagnato nel canto fermo (1600) was reprinted in 1609 and again 
in 1626. 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 115 


composers of his day were playing somewhat crudely 
with the new devices, the genius of Marenzio enabled 
him to master them completely and to assimilate them 
into the contrapuntal technique of tradition. Thus. 
while sacrificing none of the older polyphonic methods 
he was able to enrich them with the added wealth of 
chromaticism and the new harmonic resources derived 
from it. In the following extract from Marenzio’s 
gth book of five-part madrigals (1599) one hardly 
knows whether to admire most the bold melodic out- 
lines and independence of the individual parts, the 
strikingly original progressions of harmony, or the 
magnificent shape and structure of the whole passage 
which illustrates with such perfection the spirit of the 
words which inspired it : 


® 
Solo e pensoso i piu deserti campi 


Vo’ misurando a passi tarde lento.’ 


LUCA MARENzto. Sdoe fenseso (1544) . 





* Alone and pensive I wandered with slow and measured steps through 
the deserted fields. 


J 


116 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


It is but reasonable to suppose that the work of 
Marenzio exercised a considerable influence upon the 
English school of madrigalists which flourished, 
roughly, between the year of the Spanish Armada and 
accession of King Charles the First. The fact that a 
number of Marenzio’s madrigals were published in 
this country with English words in Nicholas Yonge’s 
Musica Transalpina (1588) and Thomas Watson’s 
/talian Madrigals Englished (1590) seems to show 
that these works had already attained a certain 
popularity here in their original form. But Marenzio’s 
influence was rather in the direction of solid 
polyphonic technique than in that of harmonic 
innovations. It is true that as early as 1588 William 
Byrd warned the reader of his Psalms, Sonnets, and 
Songs that “In the expressing of these songs, either 
by voyces or Instruments, if ther happen to be any 
jarre or dissonance, blame not the Printer who (I doe 
assure thee) through his great paines and diligence 
doth heere deliver to thee a perfect and true Coppie ” ; 
and within the ordinary modal limits the English 
composers of the latter half of the sixteenth century 
are perhaps rather freer in their harmony than their 
Italian contemporaries of the Roman School. But it 
is not until the last three years of the century that we 
encounter real chromaticism in English music, and 
then it appears in so astonishingly mature a form and 
is handled in such a masterly manner that it is evident 
that the principles underlying it had been thoroughly 
implanted in our composers for some considerable 
tre. The following extract from a Canzonet by 
Giles Farnaby (1598), a composer chiefly famous for 
his bold and original compositions for keyboard 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 117 


instruments, may well be compared with Marenzio’s 
Solo e pensoso, though, as the dates of publication 
show, there is no question of its being in any way 
derivative. 





The [English school provides other superb 
examples of the expressive use of chromaticism in 
Thomas Weelkes’s three-part madrigal Cease sorrows 
now (1597), and his six-part O care, thou wilt despatch 
me (1600), in John Dowland’s ayre / saw my lady 
weep (1600), and above all in John Danyel’s wonderful 
setting (1606) of the words : 


Can doleful notes to measured accents set 
Express unmeasured griefs which time forget? 
No, let chromatic tunes, harsh without ground, 
Be sullen music for a tuneless heard. 

The employment of chromatic harmony, both in 
England and in Italy, was nearly always prompted by 
the idea of pain or doubt, though in certain madrigals 
it is associated with the dolcezza amare of lovers, and 
so acquires a character of almost excessive sweetness 
—which it has retained to this day. 


118 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


Il 


When all acknowledgment has been duly paid to 
the work of his predecessors in the field of harmonic 
expressionism, Gesualdo stands out in isolation as a 
figure of extraordinary originality and indubitable 
genius. It is perhaps only when his work is exhibited 
side by side with specimens of the earlier harmonists 
that its unique quality can be appreciated at its true 
value. His influence on his contemporaries and on 
the generation which succeeded him is more difficult 
to estimate. Contemporary evidence would persuade 
us that it was considerable, but the study of seven- 
teenth century harmony is greatly complicated by the 
fact that in the early years of the century it became 
customary to publish only the principal melody of a 
work together with a figured bass which it was left to 
the performer to fill up, on the lute, organ or harpsi- 
chord, at his own discretion. Many of the 
accompanied solo songs of the first half of the century 
contain harmonies which, on the bare evidence of their 
figured basses, are in the highest degree fantastic and 
experimental; and it may safely be said that, did we 
not possess the works of Gesualdo, we should be 
completely at a loss to explain the reason for so 
sudden and widespread a movement in the direction 
of harmonic liberty. The mere appearance of the 
figured bass in the publications of the period argues a 
very considerable acquaintance with the principles of 
harmony, conceived as such, on the part of the musical 
public. This, of course, is very largely to be 
attributed to the development and increasing use of 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN I19 


keyboard instruments; but the work of Gesualdo 
which, as we have seen, achieved a quite extraordinary 
degree of notoriety, was without doubt very largely 
responsible for the sudden expansion of the range of 
harmony itself. 

Harmony, as Delius, its greatest modern master, 
has repeatedly said, is an instinct. Either you are 
born with it, or else you have to do without it. The 
same thing may be said of the gift of melodic 
invention. On the other hand, counterpoint—in so 
far as one can detach counterpoint from the ability to 
invent melodies and combine them in orderly and 
harmonious relation—can be learned and acquired by 
study. Nothing is easier than to compose an 
indifferent madrigal or fugue if you follow closely 
enough the rules and examples of the text-book 
without a thought for original invention or musical 
beauty. It is therefore manifestly absurd to suppose 
that Gesualdo wrote as he did because he could not 
sufficiently master the ordinary principles of contra- 
puntal composition. Many of his early madrigals 
are dull enough, to our ears, as music, but their very 
dullness is individual ; it is not as other men’s dullness 
—and there is, in all conscience, a liberal enough 
supply of dull music from this period to compare it 
with. From the very outset we can see that Gesualdo, 
like Berlioz, Moussorgsky, Delius and many another 
instinctive composer, was always occupied with the 
problem of personal expression. As a matter of fact 
he had at his disposal a very good equipment of 
contrapuntal technique of the traditional kind—as 
witness the two madrigals from the first book, Felice 
Primavera and Danzan le Ninfe, which have been 


j2 


120 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


reprinted by Mr. Barclay Squire. Even in his most 
mature and, harmonically, most advanced composi- 
tions the line of an individual voice part generally 
shows us quite logically how the most surprising 
progression has been brought about; a single note in 
one of the parts, chromatically altered by an 
accidental, becomes a kind of pivot on which the 
harmony swings away from the expected resolution 
into what in modern parlance would be called a remote 
key. His boldest flights of imagination impress one 
by the mastery with which they are introduced in the 
course of a composition so traditional in form and so 
essentially polyphonic in conception as the madrigal. 
Every note tells, every strange modulation has its 
particular, its precise significance. Having all the 
old polyphonic technique at his disposal, he grafted 
on to it, so to speak, his own very individual harmonic 
resources and so blended the two styles that there is 
never any feeling of incongruity between them; they 
have become one and indivisible. These madrigals 
show that the so-called homophonic revolution which 
is supposed to have dethroned polyphony at the end 
of the sixteenth century is a mere figment of the 
historians’ imagination. Gesualdo was always a 
polyphonist in his methods, yet there are harmonic 
passages in his work to which we should not find 
parallels until we come to Wagner. If anyone doubts 
this statement, let him compare the opening of 
Gesualdo’s Moro lasso al mio duolo, from the sixth 
book, with the famous chord-sequence in Die Walkiire 
which is heard when Wotan kisses Briinnhilde to 
sleep, and—a nearer parallel seeing that it occurs in 
a work for unaccompanied chorus—with the chord- 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 121 


¢ 


sequence to which the words “sound of the water ” 
are set in Delius’s Ox Craig Dhu: 


GESUALDO. I6if. 





Things of this kind must certainly have seemed 
crude and tentative, fantastic almost to the point of 
insanity, to the historians of the eighteenth and nine- 
teenth centuries. It is true that there were a few who 
appreciated them, but they were isolated exceptions. 
In the light of the musical developments of the last 
five-and-twenty years, however, we see them not as 
stammering and experimental utterances in a new 
idiom but as miracles of perfected craft and 


122. CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


expression, not as the beginning of a new era of music 
—for they stand in complete isolation, almost without 
ancestry, completely without successors-—but as one 
of the crowning glories of the old order of polyphony. 
Modern music is teaching us reverence for the old 
masters. We no longer dare to “correct” their 
works, to alter them and titivate them in a futile 
endeavour to make them conform to the conventions 
of an age other than their own, for we no longer wish 
to do so. We can see beauty and a perfect sense of 
fitness in dissonances which to our predecessors 
seemed meaningless and were treated as miscalcula- 
tions or misprints; and we can see that the best of the 
old music is as vital to-day as it was when it was written, 
in spite of its having been relegated to the dusty 
shelves of libraries for over two centuries. It speaks 
to us with a living voice in a language which, whatever 
changes of idiom may be imposed by passing time, 1s 
changeless and eternal and can never fail to evoke a 
response in the hearts of all who have ears and will 
hear. 

The most cursory examination of the Molinaro 
score is sufficient to give the lie to Burney’s charge of 
technical incompetence, about which Fetis says, with 
considerable penetration: “Ce jugement, aussi 
sévere qu injuste, prouve seulement que Burney n’a 
pas compris la pensée originale qui domine dans les 
madrigaux du prince de Venouse. Tous ces 
morceaux sont des scenes mélancoliques et douces, 
ou le musicien s’est proposé d’exprimer le sens 
poétique des paroles, suivant sa maniére individuelle 
de sentir... . Le systéme de succession des tons 
employé par Gesualdo n’est pas Ja modulation 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 123 


véritable car élément harmonique de l’enchainement 
des tonalités n’existait pas encore lorsqu’il écrivait, 
mais ces successions mémes sont une partie de sa 
pensée et Burney avait tort de les juger d’aprés les 
régles ordinaires.” 

Gesuaido was reaching out not towards tonality, 
in the academic sense of the word, but beyond it. At 
his best he is very much nearer to the modern com- 
poser who sets in juxtaposition, at the dictates of his 
inner ear, chords which are theoretically unrelated. 
He had no idea of establishing a definite tonality in 
his works, and no more desire to be bound by the key- 
system than by the modal system. But it was 
certainly not any lack of ability that made him choose 
this path. If he had wished to write conventional 
diatonic harmony, he had all the necessary technique 
to do so—-and more: witness the extraordinary 
certainty of some of his sequential modulations—as, 
for instance, his treatment of the words “d’amor empia 
homicida” in the madrigal 7 m’uccidi o crudele. 

He is a perfect master of the short, poignant 
phrase—precursor of the /ezt-motif—-whether it be an 
expressive melodic fall or a striking harmonic 
progression, or a combination of the two. Examples 
are plentiful throughout his work. Already in the 
second book (which as we have seen is actually the 
first) our attention is arrested by his profoundly 
moving treatment of the words, “O come e gran 
martire *”—words which Monteverdi had set, two years 
previously with far less telling effect. Look at the 
sombrely impressive opening of Sarge la morte in 
Book IV, the expressive downward leap of a seventh 
in the six-part Donna se m’ancidete at the end of the 


124 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


third book (an effect repeated with added emphasis in 
Cor mio deh non piangete (Book IV), the plaintive 
questioning phrase 7 piangi 6 Fillt mia? (Book VI), 
above all the noble beginning of Moro lasso which, 
though it disgusted the ear of Dr. Burney, drew a 
panegyric from Winterfeld and seemed to Kroyer “an 
ideal embodiment of majestic sorrow.” Look at the 
enigmatic close of Mille volte il di moro, with its 
melodic fall of a diminished fifth on to the final chord. 
How remarkable his endings are! The voices fade 
mysteriously into silence, and yet how cunningly—for 
all its unconventionality—is the final cadence 
contrived, how firmly the texture of the music is held 
together by a sustained pedal note in the highest or 
lowest voice—sometimes in both.’ Look at his 
impassioned exclamations—cris de ceeur which seem 
to be left suspended in the air, while other 
voices gravely comment or continue the plaint (there is 
masterly use of the different registers of the voices 
in varied effects of tone-colour to be observed 
here). | 

But it is not fair to Gesualdo’s craftsmanship to 
represent him only by short excerpts. I have there- 
fore given, in the appendix, two complete madrigals, 
in order to show how skilfully he can weld together 
a number of short phrases and sequences into a 
rhythmically balanced whole. Their form and line is 
more broken than that of the best English madrigals 


+ It is an interesting point that among all his harmonic experiments 
Gesualdo never attempted a full close on a minor chord. To sharpen the 
third of the final chord, or else omit altogether, was merely an idiomatic 
convention of the time, so we must not read any deliberate attempt to 
surprise into Gesualdo’s sudden transitions from minor to major at the 
end of a madrigal. 


3 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 125 


which, heard or read, pass through the mind in majesty 
like galleons in full sail; but these two specimens of 
Gesualdo’s art are none the less consummate achieve- 
_ ments of musical expression. 

Moussorgsky himself was not more careful to 
make his music the exact equivalent of the word than 
were some of the madrigalists of the end of the 
sixteenth century. Examples may be found of words 
like respiro, soletto, misero, characterised by being 
set to the notes 7ve, sol, and mi of the Guidonian 
hexachord; this, of course, was a mere piece of 
pedantic extravagance. But in the more legitimate 
and esthetically effective devices of word-painting the 
masters of this period attained to as high a degree of 
proficiency as has even been reached in subsequent 
centuries. It was often overdone, to such an extent 
that the musical thought became entirely subservient 
to the business of making verbal points. Thus in the 
preface of Philip Rosseter’s Book of Airs (1601) we 
find the author (probably Campion) remarking: “ But 
there are some who, to appeare the more deepe and 
singular in their judgment, will admit no Musicke but 
that which is long, intricate, bated with fuge, chaind 
with syncopation, and where the nature of everie word 
is precisely exprest in the Note, like the old exploided 
action in Comedies, when if they did pronounce 
Memeni, they would point to the hinder part of their 
heads, if Video, put their finger in their eye. But 
such childish observing of words is altogether 
ridiculous, and we ought to maintaine as well in Notes 
as in action a manly cariage, gracing no word, but that 
which is eminent and emphaticall.” 

It has been suggested that Gesualdo was the first 


126 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


‘ 


of the long line of musicians who have “ composed at 
the piano” (or whatever keyboard instrument 
happened to be handy at the time), a suggestion which 
is supported by the indisputable fact that before the 
middle of the sixteenth century, harmony was indeed 
regarded as a secondary, almost automatic product of 
concurrent streams of melody. There is not the 
slightest doubt that keyboard instruments helped to 
bring about in men’s minds a definite conception of 
chords as chords—and more particularly of discords 
(in the technical sense of chords requiring resolution) 
as such in isolation and not merely heard in passing, 
by way of suspensions, etc. But it is one thing to 
fumble about on the piano in the hope of making a 
discovery of the kind celebrated in “The Lost 
Chord,” and a very different matter to turn that 
discovery to significant account in a composition. We 
never find in Gesualdo’s work such things as 
sequences of chords moving about in semitones in 
similar motion or any of the obvious and almost 
inevitable discoveries of the keyboard-fumbler. Every 
progression of chords in his work seems to be the 
result of clear and definite musical thought. 

The form of Gesualdo’s madrigals is almost 
invariably conditioned by verbal antitheses. The 
harmonic and contrapuntal styles seem to have been 
sharply differentiated in his mind, quite apart from 
any consideration of the notes—combinations or 
figurations—employed in either; he pits the one style 
against the other in different sections of a madrigal 
according as the sentiment of the text (which is always 
stated, emphasized even, by a kind of key-word, 
never merely suggested) provides him with oppor- 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN £29 


tunities of sudden change. Slow, strange progressions 
of chords and short, heart-rending cries of melody are 
reserved for the expression of grief, suffering and 
thoughts of death; brilliant contrapuntal writing, 
generally in rapid groups of semiquavers, with no 
special melodic or harmonic significance, will always 
accompany the words 70%, movement, ardour, etc. He 
seems to have so concentrated his peculiar genius upon 
the expression of doleful sentiments that his joyful 
moods are apt to appear perfunctory and almost 
negative by contrast: and it is interesting in this 
connection to compare him with some of the 
protagonists of the nineteenth century Romantic 
movement. In both we see the same preoccupation 
with the darker aspects of life, the tragic, the grisly 
and the bizarre. The high-lights and shadows are 
perhaps exaggerated at times, but a fine proportion 
and a sort of formal balance of opposing sections is 
always maintained. Where Gesualdo falls short 
(he can hardly be said to fail in what he never seems 
to attempt) is in sustained melody. Weelkes’s 
madrigal Hence, Care, thou art too cruel, is as 
antithetical and full of word-painting as any 
of Gesualdo’s: but the Prince could never have 
written the lovely, smooth-flowing passage to which 
Weelkes has set the words “ Come Music, sick man’s 
jewel.” He lacks the serenity and the reflective dignity 
of the best English masters, in comparison with whom 
he seems, to an English mind at any rate, almost 


1 This lends additional absurdity to the suggestion of Tassoni (1646) 
that he was influenced by the compositions (now lost, if indeed they ever 
existed) of James I, King of Scotland—a statement which gave rise to the 
further supposition that traces of ‘‘ Scottish melodies ’’ could be found in 
Gesualdo’s madrigals ! 


128 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


sensational. His art is turbulent, passionate, based 
upon violent contrasts and sudden variations of mood 
and, if Anatole France’s sketch of him be founded on 
fact, “c’était un seigneur trés redouté pour son 
humeur jalouse et violente. Ses ennemis lui 
reprochaient sa ruse et sa cruauté. Ils l’appelaient 
matin de renard et de louve et deux fois béte puante.” 
Such a temperament is by no means incompatible with 
the tenderness and elegaic suavity his music so often 
exhibits. But we must beware of reading auto- 
biography into his works as Keiner does when he 
suggests that Gesualdo turned to music as a consola- 
tion after the death of his first wife, and that the mood 
of melancholy which pervades the greater part of his 
work was the direct outcome of that tragic circum- 
stance. Gesualdo was a pure creative artist and the 
prevailing mood of his music was conditioned by his 
temperament, not by external events. 

For all his pictorialism he was a very “ absolute ” 
musician who generally expressed in his music a far 
profounder thought than that of the poem he was 
ostensibly setting. He could concentrate his whole 
idea of mortality into a madrigal apparently concerned 
with no more tragic contingency than the unkindness 
of a fair lady and the euphemistic “ death ” that would 
results from her persistence in so hard-hearted a mood ; 
and the texts of some of his very finest madrigals are 
such miserable specimens of poetry—sometimes they 
remind one very forcibly of the present-day 
“ballad ’’—that one can only feel that he regarded 
his texts for the most part merely as framework for his 
music. His insistence on the word was in reality 
not literalism at all, but a kind of universalisation, a 


GESUALDO THE MUSICIAN 129 


distilling of the quintessence of the word itself quite 
apart from its particular context and significance in the 
poem in question; and we find that the words he is 
most often inspired by are just those which in them- 
selves have a universal emotional import—sosfi71, 
dolore, martive, morte . . . and so on. 

In short, Gesualdo was a composer of extra- 
ordinary genius whose works, for all the oblivion into 
which they have fallen, still live, in the fullest sense of 
the word, as the vivid and passionate expression of a 
strange personality. While Peri and Monteverdi were 
bringing to birth that new vehicle of expression which 
was to become the opera, Gesualdo, without the aid of 
action and a theatre, was dramatising the emotions 
themselves—and his contribution to the first period of 
dramatic music was no less important than theirs. 
Historical preoccupations are often apt to blind one to 
the purely esthetic significance of works of art. The 
great monuments of sculpture and architecture need no 
elucidation or commentary; we have the works them- 
selves and what they do not reveal to the mind that 
contemplates them can never be discovered by reading 
and research. But when we come to old music, we 
have not got the music itself, but only a symbol of it, 
whose accuracy, or rather whose all-sufficiency, we 
cannot help doubting at times (there are, of course, no 
indications of tempo, dynamics or expression in 
sixteenth and early seventeenth century music). 

Perhaps some day the music itself will come back 
tous. The most fantastic imaginings of one century 
are wont to become the merest commonplaces of the 
next. Imagine the scornful contempt with which an 
Elizabethan would have greeted the man who told him 


130 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


that, latent among mankind’s potentialities, lay the 
power to fly through the air, the power to capture the 
sound of a man’s voice and reproduce it years after 
his death, the power to sing into a little box in 
America and be heard in London. Yet all these 
things have come to pass; and I for one look forward 
hopefully to the time when—since no sound uttered in 
this world is ever wholly lost—some scientific 
method will be devised for disentangling the 
innumerable sound-waves of the centuries and 
tracing them back to their several sources; or some 
faculty of clairaudience be discovered which will save 
the memory of neglected genius from its present 
unhappy dependence upon the activities of insuff- 
ciently enthusiastic archeologists on the one hand, 
and insufficiently informed enthusiasts on the other. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 


(1) THe Works oF GESUALDO AS ORIGINALLY 
PUBLISHED 


1594. Five-part Madrigals. Book 1, printed in Ferrara by 
Vittorio Baldini, the ducal printer, with a dedicatory 
preface by Scipione Stella, dated May roth, 1594. 
Reprinted in 1603, 1607, 1616 (by Angelo Gardano, 
Venice). 


Contents 


1594. Five-part Madrigals. 


Caro amoroso neo 

Ma se tale ha costei 

Se per lieve ferita 

Hai rotto, e sciolto 

Che sentir deve 

In piu leggiadro velo 
Se cosi dolce é il duolo 
Ma se avverra ch’io moia 
Se taccio il duol s’avvanz 
O come é gran martire 


O mio soave ardore 
Sento che nel partire 
Non e questa la mano 
Ne tien face, 0 saetta 
Candida man 

Da l’odorate spoglie 

E quella Arpa felice 
Non mai non cangieré 
All’ apparir di quelle 
Non mi toglia il ben mio 


Book 2, printed in Ferrara by 


Vittorio Baldini, the ducal printer, with a dedicatory 
preface by Scipione Stella, dated June 2nd, 1594. 
Reprinted 1603 (Venice), 1604 (Naples), 1607 and 
1616 (Venice), 1617 (Naples). 


Contents 


Baci soavi e Cari 
Quanto ha di dolce Amore 
Madonna io ben vorrei 
Come esser pud 

Gelo ha Madonna il seno 
Mentre Madonna 

Ahi troppo saggia 

Se da si nobil mano 
Amor pace non chero 

Si gioioso mi fanno 


EE 


O dolce mio martire 
Tirsi morir volea 
Freno Tirsi il desio 
Mentre mia stella miri 
Non mirare non mirare 
Questi leggiadri 

Felice Primavera 
Danzan le Ninfe 

Son si belle le rose 
Bell’ Angioletta 


132, CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


1595. Five-part Madrigals. Book 3, printed in Ferrara by 
Vittorio Baldin1, the ducal printer, with a dedicatory 
preface by Hettore Gesualdo, dated March 19th, 1595. 
Reprinted in Venice 1603, 1611, and 1619. 


Contents 


Non t’amo 6 voce ingrata 

Meraviglia d’amore 

Et ardo e vivo 

Crudelissima doglia 

Se piange ohime 

Ancidetemi pur 

Se vi miro pietosa 

Deh se gia fu crudele 

Dolcissimo sospiro 

Donna se m’ancidete 
(six-part) 


Voi volete ch’io mora 
Moro 6 non moro 

Ahi disperata vita 
Languisco e moro 

Del bel de bei vostri occhi 
Ahi dispietata e cruda 
Dolce spirto d’amore 
Sospirava il mio core 

O mal nati messaggi 
Veggio si dal mio sole 


1596. Five-part Madrigals. Book 4, printed in Ferrara by 
Vittorio Baldini, the ducal printer, with a dedicatory 
preface by Hettore Gesualdo without date. Reprinted 
1604, 1611, and 1616 (Venice). 


Contents 


Luci serene, e chiare 
Tal’hor sano desio 

Io tacerd ma nel silentio 
In van dunque 6 crudele 
Che fai meco mio cor 
Questa crudele, e pia 
Hor che in giora 

O sempre crudo Amore 
Cor mio deh non piange 
Dunque non m/’offendete 


Sparge la morte al mio 


‘Moro, e mentre sospiro 


Quando di lui la sospirata 
Mentre mira colei 

A voi mentre il mio core 
Ecco morirdé dunque 

Ahi gia mi discoloro 
Arde il mio cor 

Se chiudete nel core 

Tl sol qual hor pit (six-part) 


Volgi mia luce (six-part) 


1603. Sacrae Cantiones Book 1, for five voices. Printed in 
Naples by Constantino Vitali and published by Don 
Giovanni Pietro Cappuccio. 


1603. Sacrae Cantiones Book 1, for six and seven voices. 
Published and printed as above. 


1611. Responsoria. For six voices. Printed in Naples by 
Giovanni Jacomo Carlino. The only known copies 
of these three books of sacred music are in the library 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 133 


of the ‘‘ Oratorio dei Filippini,’’ at Naples. The 
present writer has not been able to examine them. 


1611. Five-part Madrigals. Book 5, printed in Gesualdo by 
Giovanni Jacomo Carlino with a dedicatory preface by 
Don Giovanni Pietro Cappuccio, dated 2oth June, 
1611. Reprinted in 1614 in Venice by Bartholomeo 
Magni il Gardano, who adds a new dedication to 
Alfonso Strozzi, dated January ist, 1614, with his 
‘“best wishes for the New Year.’’ 


Contents 
Gioite voi col canto Mercé grido piangendo 
S’io non miro non moro O voi troppo felici 
Itene 6 miei sospiri Correte amanti a prova 
Dolcissima mia vita Asciugate i begli occhi 
O dolorosa gioia Tu m/’uccidi 6 crudele 
Qual fora donna Deh coprite il ben seno 
Felicissimo sonno Poi che l’avida sete 
Se vi duole il mio duolo Ma tu cagion di quella 
Occhi del mio cor vita O tenebroso giorno 
Languisco al sin Se tu fuggi io non resto 


T’amo mia vita. 


1611. Five-part Madrigals. Book 6, printed in Gesualdo by 
Giovanni Jacomo Carlino, with a dedicatory preface by 
Don Giovanni Pietro Cappuccio, dated 15th July, 1611. 
Reprinted in Venice, 1616. 


Contents 
Se la mia morte brami : Candido e verde fiore 
Belta poi che t’assenti Ardita Zanzaretta 
Resta di darmi noia Ardo per te mio bene 
Tu piangi 6 Filli mia Ancide sol la morte 
Chiaro risplender suole Quel no crudel 
Io parto e non pit dissi Moro lasso al mio duolo 
Mille volte il di moro Volan quasi farfalle 
O dolce mio tesoro Al mio gioir il ciel si fa sereno 
Deh come in van sospiro Tu segui 6 bella Clori 
Io pur respiro Ancor che per amarti 
Alme d’amor rubelle Gia piansi nel dolore 


Quando ridente e bella 


1613. Score of the six books of five-part madrigals. Printed 
in Genoa by Giuseppe Pavoni and published by Simone 
Molinaro, Maestro di Cappella of the Cathedral of 
Genoa. 


134 


CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


1626 (posthumous). Six-part Madrigals, printed in Naples by 


Ambrosio Magnetta and published by Mutio Effrem 
with a dedicatory preface to the Prince’s widow, 
Donna Leonora d’Este-Gesualdo, dated 15th July, 


“1626. Of this work one voice part alone (the Quinto) 


survives, in the Library of the Liceo Musicale, 
Bologna. 


Contents 
Quale spada L’arco amoroso 
Parlo misero Sfogando (in 2 sections) 
Tu che non Fra chare danze 
Dove fuggi mio Videla poi 
Sei disposto (in 2 sections) De bei colori 
Pieta signore Perche tal 
Cor mio benche Hai come 
Non é questa Gravid ’il 
O chiome Quando vaga 


Two short madrigals (which are rather in the nature of 
Canzonetti, having several verses to the same music), were 
printed at the end of Pomponio Nenna’s eighth book of 
_ madrigals (1618). These do not appear in any other volume. 

Three madrigals from Gesualdo’s second book reappear in 
Scipione Stella’s Nuova Scelta di Madrigali di sette auton 
(Naples, 1615), Nenna and Dentice being included among the 


seven composers. 


1585. 
1594. 


1595: 


(2) REFERENCES TO GESUALDO BY HIS 
CONTEMPORARIES. 


Giovanni Leon Primavera dedicates his 7th book of five- 
part madrigals to Gesualdo. 


Luzzasco Luzzaschi dedicates his 4th book of madrigals 
to Don Carlo Giesoaldi (sic.) in Ferrara. 


Sebastian Raval, ‘‘Gentilhuomo Spagnuolo dell’ 
Ordine di S. Giovanni Battista Hierosolimitano,’’ 
dedicates two madrigals in his Madrigali a tre voct 
‘(published in Rome to Gesualdo: ‘*‘Con alcun 


1615. 


- BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 135 


studio, non gia certo, che arrivino di gran lunga alla 
composition di si gran Principe al colmo d’ogni 
perfettione, l’ho raccolti, e gli mando in luce composti 
per soggetti tali, gli dedicoa V.S. .. .”’ 


D. Romano Micheli, in his Musica Vaga et artificiosa, 
gives an interesting list of musicians living in Naples in 
the time of Gesualdo: ‘‘In Napoli essendo io al 
servitio dell’ Illustrissimo et Eccellentissimo Sig. 
Prencipe di Venosa con li Signori Musici Scipione 
Stella, Gio. Battista di Pavola, Mutio Effrem, e 
Pomponio Nenna, in tempo che erano li Signori 
Bartolomeo Roi Maestro di Cappella, e Gio. Macque 
Organista nella Cappella del Vice Re, viventi Rocco 
Rodio, Scipione Cerretto, Giustiniano Forcella, e 
Domenico Montella, musici peritissmi.’’ 


References to Gesualdo also occur in the following books : 


1601. 
1615. 


1613. 
1622. 
1635. 


1636.. 


1650. 
1650. 


1706. 


Cerreto, Scipione, ‘‘Della prattica Musica vocale et 
strumentale.”’ 


Blancanus, Josephus, “‘Chronologia celebrorum Mathe- 
maticorum ad sec. Christi XVII.’’ 


Cerone, Pietro, ‘‘ E! Melopeo y Maestro.”’ 
Peacham, Henry, ‘‘ The Compleat Gentleman.”’ 
Doni, Giov. Batt., collected works. 

Mersenne, M., ‘‘Harmonie Universelle.’’ 
Kircher, Athanasius, ‘‘ Musurgia Universalis.’’ 


Vossius, Gerhard, ‘‘ De Universae matheseos natura et 
constitutione.’’ 


Spagna, Archangelo, ‘‘ Oratorii overo Melodrammi.”’ 


(3) Mopern REprRINTS OF GESUALDO’S WorKS. 


(A) In a form convenient for the use of simgers. 


(a). Four volumes devoted to Gesualdo in the Raccolta Nazionale 
delle Musiche Italiane, published in 1919 by the Instituto 


K2 


136 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


Editoriale Italiano in Milan, under the editorship of 
Ildebrando Pizzetti, contain : 


O come é gran martire From Book I 
Baci soavi e cari From Book II 
Quanto ha di dolce Amore - “e 


Tirsi morir volea a :. 
Freno Tirsi il desio ~ ** 
Languisco e moro From Book III 
Non t’amo 6 voce ingrata i. A 
Meraviglia d’Amore 


Io tacero From Book IV 
Sparge la morte e _" 
Arde il mio cor * 3 
O dolorosa gioia From Book V 
Merce grido piangendo * 3 
Tu m/’uccidi 6 crudele " a 
Resta di darmi noia From Book VI 
Volan quasi farfalle » ” 


The reader is cautioned against two misprints which occur 
in this edition of Tu m’uccidi (Quaderno 62, page 11). The 
last note on the page for the first voice should ia D, not C; 
and the corresponding note in the third voice should be B, 
not A. 


(b) Breitkopf and Hartel publish in their series Ausgewahlte 
Madrigale, edited by W. Barclay Squire: 


Felice Primavera 
Danzan le Ninfe From Book II 


(c) Joseph Williams, Ltd., publish, under the editorship of J. B. 
McEwen : 


Resta di darmi noia 
Moro lasso From Book VI 


The Italian texts are not given in this edition, and the 
English versions are excessively bad, causing phrases to be 
broken up, accents to be misplaced, and the significance of the 
striking harmonic progressions which Gesualdo uses to express 
particular words such as dolorosa, morte, etc., to be entirely 
lost. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 137 
(B) Madrigals reprinted in collections or books. 


Luigi Torchi: L’Arte Musicale in Italia, Vol. IV, prints 


Non t’amo 6 voce ingrata 
Donna se m’ancidete 
Itene 6 miei sospiri 
Dolcissima mia vita 

Gia piansi nel dolore 


Kiesewetter: Schicksale und Beschaffenheit des weltlichen 
Gesanges (1841) 


Moro e mentre sospiro 


Prince de la Moskowa: Receuil des morceaux de musique 
ancienne 
Come esser puo 
Gelo ha Madonna il seno 


Martini: Saggio di Contrappunto (1774) 


Donna se m/’ancidete . 
Freno Tirsi il desio 
Moro e mentre sospiro 


Hawkins : History of Music (1776) 


Baci soavi e cari 
Quanto ha di dolce Amore 


Burney: A General History of Music (1776) 


Moro lasso 


Ambros: Geschichte der Musik 


Resta di darmi noia 


Keiner : Die Madrigale Gesualdos 
Mercé grido 


Riemann’s Musiklexicon (1916 edition) states that the 
Institut francais de Florence is preparing a new edition of all 
the five-part madrigals, under the editorship of P. M. Masson. 
Up to the present, however, this has not appeared, nor has any- 
thing further been heard of it. 


ce 


138 CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


(4) Mopern Booxs RELATING TO GESUALDO AND. HIS 
Works. 


Ambros, Wilhelm, Geschichte der Musik (third edition, 1909, 
with valuable additions by Hugo Leichtentritt) 

Eitner, Robert, Quellenlexicon 

Keiner, Ferdinand, Die Madrigale Gesualdos von Venosa (1914) 

Kroyer, Theodor, Die Anfange der Chromatik im Italienischen 
Madrigale des XVIten Jahrhunderts (1902) 

Morris, R. O., Contrapuntal Technique in the Sixteenth 
Century (1922) 

Newman, Ernest, A Musical Critic’s Holiday (1925) 

Pruniéres, Henri, Monteverdi (Les Maitres de la Musique) (1924) 

Riemann, Hugo, Geschichte der Musiktheorie im IX-XIX 
Jahrhundert 

Vogel, Emil, Bibliothek der gedruckten weltlichen Vokalmusik 
Italiens (1892) 

Winterfeld, Carl von, Johannes Gabrieli und sein Zeitalter 
(1834) 


APPENDIX OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES. 


EXAMPLE 1. 


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139 


CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


EXAMPLE 2. 


140 


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CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


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MUSICAL EXAMPLES 


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CARLO GESUALDO, PRINCE OF VENOSA 


EXAMPLE 15. 


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EXAMPLE 16. 





EXAMPLE 17. 





145 


MUSICAL EXAMPLES 


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i! 


te Wek 
ye 

Aart 

alt 4 

i 


NK il 


weedeat 
Hae ee 
ahi! 
HERI Ny 


. Vert 
Saba 
Si ia re int 

iw 


mange es he 
: Sa 


aigie 
we mans 


; ih 
WR ey 
PSTN 


thas 
ihn 
BENS 


xt Nt: K 
SESS Aa 
ae u ‘i j ing 
at Heine aes 
aS EST sia } 
RO 
He 





‘ 
aN 

% i Ay 
ee 
Pe aEND fF 


